BatchBook, BatchBlue.com Get Refreshes
It seems like every time I hunker down to do a fairly substantail redesign, I end up doing a refresh for both BatchBook and BatchBlue.com. The last time was just last October.
BatchBook
First was the refresh of BatchBook. We had a few goals in mind that I wrote about on the BatchBlue Blog post. Among them:
- Making the primary column stand out a bit more. The two columns had too similar a look before and lacked visual hierarchy.
- Removing some redundant headers and other extraneous markup.
- Creating a more useful footer with a context-sensitive help section (FAQs and Screencasts depending on where you are in the app).
- Moving the search to the header, allowing us to bring up the sidebar content some.
- Making it less blue—there was a lot of it. The colors are toned down a ton.
- Getting a bit more of “me” in there—make the full transition to a Georgia/Lucida Grande font deck and getting some serious gray action in there.
And the results. Here’s the contacts page:
And here’s what an individual contact page looks like:
If you haven’t noticed how cool that social media integration is, I encourage you to look hard. Or, sign up even. 
BatchBlue.com
And while I’m on the redesign kick, why stop with the app? Off to the marketing site I went. Here I worked with some great design concepts by the lovely and talented Mikey Hougland to do a home page/footer refresh. Again, a goals list:
- Getting a screen shot front and center. If you’ve got it, flaunt it.
- Getting the screencasts more publicity. Despite the fact that the screencasts lived on the third level navigation, people were finding them like crazy. The people want it, so we bubbled them up to the top. Of course, now I gotta do a new set post-refresh!
- Removing the sidebar to let the design breathe a bit better.
- Building out the footer (similar to BatchBook) and reducing some navigation into footer links.
- Getting rid of what I affectionately call “the goddamn starburst” and replacing it with the client login.
- Going full-out Georgia/Lucida Grande.
And the results:
And there we have it. I’m curious to hear what you think!
One thing I noticed about the homepage is that it no longer features the custom BatchBooks for realtors, designers, etc. In fact, I can’t find them at all anymore!
Hi Adam: That area was actually left out TEMPORARILY. We’re collecting some more user info and will turn that into one more area of the home page. Stay tuned for that. But in the meantime, I’ll take a look at getting those back in there somewhere. It’s good stuff!
When I saw the screencast hit the front page I cheered. They should be easily found because they are so helpful.
I’ve seen you talk about how you’ve made the screencasts on the blog, but not the screencast themselves. Would be cool if they hit the feed so your users have another way of getting the content!
Hi Chel: The screencasts actually have their own feed, but I’ll do a better job of posting screencasts to the blog feed when they’re updated. I’ll be doing a whole new set soon, since we’ve got a new design and a bunch of new features to show off!
Cool!
I just didn’t see them in the regular feed so assumed they weren’t there. Off to subscribe. Thanks Adam!