Homepage new look

Hey everyone!

Home page got a bit of a facelift. Not a major feature, but hopefully it highlights what we do a little better. You have to be logged out to see it (or open up an incognito/private tab).

What do you think? https://equipboard.com

It's a nice improvement over the previous design. The big photo background lends some depth that allows the most important stuff to pop better.

I like the 3-prong value proposition, and the order in which they are currently placed. As a too-much-time-here person, this priority rings true.

My one crit would be that the only CTA above the scroll is asking me to sign up, before I've had a taste of what EB actually is. You get a nice sense of what makes EB special once you scroll down, but there's nothing in the design that indicates there is more below to scroll to (at least on 5k iMac and iPhone resolutions). I don't know if I've ever signed up for something, regardless of FB, Google, Twitter ID-integration, without first getting a really good sense of what I'm signing up for.

Regardless, congrats on the improvements!

Thanks for the kind words & feedback!

I like the 3-prong value proposition, and the order in which they are currently placed. As a too-much-time-here person, this priority rings true.

Glad to hear that. I think we could do a much better job of delivering on value proposition #3, the one about getting good deals on gear. In fact, that's a change to the site that is coming up very soon. I spoke about it a bit in this forum post.

I don't know if I've ever signed up for something, regardless of FB, Google, Twitter ID-integration, without first getting a really good sense of what I'm signing up for.

That's great feedback. For a long time, the bread and butter of the site has been associating gear with pro artists, though that process isn't exactly lightweight since the proof and explanation require some level of thought & care. As the site evolves it's becoming more about helping people find kick-ass gear, pro artists or not. And in that sense you can contribute by adding your own tagged photos of gear in the wild, writing reviews, recommending related/complementary gear, etc.

How would you propose quickly giving people a sense of what they're in for?

That's great feedback. For a long time, the bread and butter of the site has been associating gear with pro artists, though that process isn't exactly lightweight since the proof and explanation require some level of thought & care. As the site evolves it's becoming more about helping people find kick-ass gear, pro artists or not. And in that sense you can contribute by adding your own tagged photos of gear in the wild, writing reviews, recommending related/complementary gear, etc.

How would you propose quickly giving people a sense of what they're in for?

Thanks for the thoughtful response, gchiaren. :) I appreciate you asking.

I think the content below the scroll is a nice overview of what the EB experience is like, at the moment. It's evolving, as you mentioned, but those organized lanes/layers of artist and product content feel true to what is currently on-offer.

Naive/non-rhetorical question: do visitors who signup before exploring the site have better long-term outcomes than those who explore first, then signup at a later date/time? If so, then I'd say the new design makes perfect sense as-is. If the data suggests otherwise, I might suggest funneling them directly to the experience/activity that best correlates to a positive long-term outcomes, and having the signup wall present once they try to add a review, photo, like, etc.

For anyone reading along, most of the people who frequent Equipboard are way more fun than me, and they don't speak in boring software/business jargon like this. I'm an oddball. Someone say something FUN, please! XD

... I think we could do a much better job of delivering on value proposition #3, the one about getting good deals on gear. In fact, that's a change to the site that is coming up very soon. I spoke about it a bit in this forum post.

I can appreciate that the explosion of the boutique pedal market over the past 25 years complicates the process of serving up the pedal boards of the pros and using that connection to help people choose the right pedals for themselves. There are SO MANY great pedals out there, with 95% similar analog tone circuitry among many of them, you not only have to educate people that John Frusciante uses a vintage Boss DM-2, but that rather than spending $600 on a used one, you could get the Waza Craft DM-2W for $150, or a 3rd-party clone, ORRRR a DSP-based vintage delay modeling pedal that also models a Roland Space Echo and a Memory Man for roughly the same price... AAANND this pedal proliferation means that because there are so many outstanding pedals out there, better than the vintage classics in many respects, that many excellent products don't have many (if any) pros associated with them yet, because there are 100 other very similar pedals out there...

...I don't know where I'm going with all this... just thinking through what you guys must be up against in terms of value prop #3.