Ian Landsman is Starting From Scratch, April 7, 2007:
It’s ……. Alive!!
If you're in the market for a powerful and user friendly Help Desk solution, please take a look at my company's flagship product HelpSpot.
UserScape.com version 2.0 is live. As I said in the previous post about the design I think this is Mike’s best work to date. The design looks really great. There are lots of little improvements throughout the site as well. A small sample include:
- Big emphasis on the UI (the banner). We get loads of compliments on it so might as well shake it if you’ve got it
- Trying out the “start a trial” in the banner idea.
- Showing the base price on the homepage.
- Showing a guarantee on the homepage (If you’re not happy I’d always give your money back, might as well note that)
- Much improved call to action buttons with big yellow buttons instead of light colored links in the old design.
- Newsletter sign up (hopefully I’ll actually have time to write one!)
- HelpSpotted the HelpSpot blog. Should be useful for running the beta and building a little more community.
- You can now request a hosted trial from the trial sign up page instead of needing to email separately.
- Consistent side nav calls to action throughout site, including support forums which get lots of search engine traffic.
There’s lots more, but I’m too sleepy to go through it . Poke around if you get a chance and let me know if anything is broken, as I"m sure there must be.
Discussion
Hi Ian,
One small thing, on the main page the RSS feed doesn't get picked up by Firefox.
p.s. Are you doing a 301 redirect on Userscape.com? I would like to do the same idea, in case of product 2.
Created by Colin M on 04.08.2007 3:53 am
It looks great. You might consider making that header image of the Workspace a link to start the trial. I say that because I just started using Crazy Egg (http://crazyegg.com/) to analyse my site and it showed that people will just click images, regardless of whether they're a link or not.
Created by John Topley on 04.08.2007 5:11 am
dude the new design is sexy! great work. now if only i could convince you to ditch the Nielsen design on the blog...i personally think his concepts are even more confusing than what he argues against. there is no direction guiding you to the important content.
by the way, have you thought about finding or building a blog plugin that will give you the option of emailing to your newsletter list at the same time? you could use it on big posts, saving you the extra time it takes to send out the newsletter. i built a plugin like this for Squidoo, which we use daily to publish our lens of the day. joel on software also seems to use a similar tool when he publishes a new blog entry.
Created by Gil on 04.08.2007 9:35 am
also, i'm curious how you decided on the order of the items in the right sidebar column. it must have been a tough decision. would you mind sharing your thought process? and did I mention how much i LOVE THE NEW DESIGN? ++ on the lightboxes
Created by Gil on 04.08.2007 9:42 am
I love having a blog. Nice job guys, I've added the RSS header so browsers pick it up and I've also made the header image clickable. Rather than go to the trial though, I have it linking to the tour since for HelpSpot most visitors want to see the tour before they trial and that will lead to more screenshots.
Thanks Gil, sexy... sweet. Yeah I need a way to highlight the popular posts better. I'll work on it when I have some time, but for now at least this is cleaner.
As for mailing lists the software I use (http://www.expressionengine.com) has this built in, though I'm so used to using http://www.campaignmonitor.com that I'm not sure which I'll use when I actually need to send. The other nice part about CM is that the emails come off their server so my IP's don't end up on any black lists if people start "unsubscribing" by moving newsletters to the spam folder (which many people do).
The sidebar was tricky. I'm trying out a few different things. On the homepage I went with the purchase link first. I've never had a "purchase now" type of call to action so we'll see. I don't think I'm going to get lots of impulsive purchases, that's not how this type of software is procured, but perhaps it will put a spark in someone's head and get them buying earlier.
On the homepage only the subnav is at the bottom. I thought this would be good so that the calls to action are first on the right. Also, in the new design there's other ways to get to that info from the homepage. For instance you can get to the pricing page by clicking "less" in the purchase box and you can get to testimonials from the "read more" links on the left.
You'll also notice that some of the sidebars are different. For instance in the tour pages the "start a trial" link is first and the "take a tour" link is gone since it wouldn't make sense when you're in the tour.
Created by Ian on 04.08.2007 10:31 am
interesting. but why pick the purchase button as the only one above the fold on the homepage if they are not likely to purchase immediately anyway? i see what you mean about getting them in the mindset of buying, but i feel like it is forcing them into a decision right away.
didn't you post some numbers a while back saying that free trials were key in converting prospects to customers? if so, why not move the 45 day free trial up top?
luckily, it seems like the type of thing that simple A/B analytics testing could help you figure out in no time.
Created by Gil on 04.08.2007 10:49 am
The most viewed part of a page is generally the top left corner. You'll see in the header there's actually a trial link. So I figured if I have one right there it's kind of odd to have a second at the top of the right nav. Also having the purchase link on tops makes the starting price more prominent (something I've never tried before) and also the guarantee. Rather than those things being buried below the fold they're now at the top.
Created by Ian on 04.08.2007 10:58 am
good point. i somehow missed the trial link at the top - don't ask me how. i rest my case
Created by Gil on 04.08.2007 11:05 am
Hi Ian,
Looks really good.
Congrats !
Walter
Created by Walter Higgins on 04.08.2007 3:44 pm
Mike strikes again. He does great work.
I can totally see IT managers eating up the site. They tend to be the analytical types, and they'll be pouring over the information on that site for hours! It's a lot of text, but for your market I think it's the right thing to do!
Created by Michael Sica on 04.08.2007 11:30 pm
Thanks Ian and everyone for your kind words. I'm very excited about how Ian's new site has turned out — we had a blast doing the design work together so it's great to see the vision unfold from sketches to final site so well.
I feel like UserScape's new site design is one of my best as well. I think as I've lived and breathed the web the last few years, my understanding of the medium continues to improve.
There's always much more to learn, but the goal is making progress and learning from past successes and failures.
Created by Mike Rohde on 04.10.2007 3:45 pm
Congrats!
Ian, I must say I really envy^H^H^H^H admire how you pull the whole HelpSpot business off and dream on repeat your path in some other vertical. One day. 
Best of luck,
Max.
Created by Max Ischenko on 04.11.2007 6:09 am