Equipboard Redesign

Thought I'd start a thread about the redesign, now that I'm seeing it more often & it's starting to get in my way at times.

Something I'm really missing in the new design is the list of people who own an item that used to be at the end of each page. I used that as a way to discover other people's Equipboards & check out who else is using something before I buy or downloadf it. (For example, today I'm looking into Kazrog True Iron, so I've found it on Equipboard... I can see one other person has saved it, but I can't see who now, so I can't click on their Equipboard to see if their music style / gear tastes are similar to mine, or what they might have rated it without actually writing a review for it.)

My other concern is that there's a ton of non-information above the fold. The links for "reviews" and # saved are really tiny on desktop now. If I scroll down, each individual section - artists, reviews, details - completely fills a single screen of my 27" desktop monitor, even if they're completely empty with no content. I'm sure you folks know way more about SEO than I do, but something about this redesign feels more 'content farm' for me than the previous design did.

If I had a way to re-enable the old design on my account, I'd love that - but I realize there must be a reason you're moving to a new design.

I still love Equipboard though!

First of all, thank you SO much for the feedback. Whether you love what we're doing, hate it, or something in between, it's hugely valuable to hear what you all think. It goes a long way beyond us just looking at our analytics tools to make decisions.

(If anyone else is curious, namesuppressed is referring to the recently redesigned product page, like this one: https://equipboard.com/items/analog-man-king-of-tone-overdrive-guitar-effect-pedal)

I want to address some of your points:

Something I'm really missing in the new design is the list of people who own an item that used to be at the end of each page. I used that as a way to discover other people's Equipboards

You're right, we opted to do away with that because we honestly never felt it was that useful, but it's interesting to hear a counter-argument. If more people felt this way, it wouldn't be that hard to bring the section back.

One thing we DO want to add to the new product page - which we think might be a better way to explore other members' gear - is photos. Imagine if you were looking at some gear and could see it as part of people's gear setups... check out this example of the Tube Screamer product page:

https://i.imgur.com/maZepHg.png

The links for "reviews" and # saved are really tiny on desktop now

You're right, they're pretty small. We can make them a few pixels larger if you think that would help usability.

If I scroll down, each individual section - artists, reviews, details - completely fills a single screen of my 27" desktop monitor, even if they're completely empty with no content.

You have a good point. The empty sections with no content are large, no doubt about that. We can definitely trim away some of that whitespace, no need to take up so much vertical space.

I'm sure you folks know way more about SEO than I do

SEO is important, but not at the expense of your experience on the site. That's why feedback like this is so nice 🙂

To be honest the major motivations to redesign were:

1. Just to give the site a much needed visual refresh
2. To unify mobile and desktop more and make both experiences feel snappy and functional
3. To make browsing the pro artists that use an item MUCH better. The way it used to be - with the slider that only showed 3 or 4 at a time - was a terrible way to browse when an item accumulated a ton of artist users. In the redesign, the artist "cards" are larger and we added filtering options so that you can jump straight to an artist you care about, or sort by name or most followed.

I still love Equipboard though!

Glad to hear it, we love you too :) Curious to hear more thoughts on the product page redesign.

Before I reply to anything else - I just found the new gear editing options, and the ability to change gear photos & even add brands! That's fantastic, thank you.

It also ties in with your point about photos. Honestly, seeing dozens of Tube Screamers doesn't work for me because they all look alike... but I see that if people can upload a photo of their own specific guitar, or even a photo of them with their guitar, that will make a lot of people happy. Being able to upload photos of your own pedalboard & tag the items in it would be useful too. (I mostly work in the box, so photo uploading won't apply much to me, every screenshot of a VSTi looks identical.)

...we opted to do away with that because we honestly never felt it was that useful...

I get the feeling I'm one of the only people who used it, so I understand! However, when it was around, it nudged me to increase my gear IQ. I shouldn't admit this, but when I saw others with a higher Gear IQ on gear that I own, it would sometimes prompt me to find another studio tour video or Sound On Sounda article that I could examine to easily rack up some more meaningless internet points ;)

If I can add a UI request... on mobile, is there any chance of adding a search box in the front page itself? Perhaps above the fold or roughly where the Gear Recommender button is? I know there's search in the hamburger menu, but I keep forgetting to look there. Usually I'm starting with a specific gear item now, rather than a specific artist. (Basically I think of Equipboard as the Wikipedia of music gear - like Vintage Synth Explorer or EveryMac, but for all music gear.)