LitQuake: a Nuit Blanche style event but with authors, not artists.

New Site

The first thing you notice, less emphasis on books… but the biggest change is blog.indigo.ca. Community is still there (and still broken) but they are now attempting to engage directly with customers via the regular-old-internet, senior people too and noticeably the staff are named — and Heather’s editorializing is no where in site sight.

Other things I noticed…

• A smaller home page (their SEO/ page rank is going to take a big hit next week)
• More personalization (a big blank space on the main page for your cookie’d recos)
• Expanded inventory selection
• Presumably a new CMS
• Tiled photos for browsing
• Page side-scrolling (annoying)
• Item-page facebook like button
• No mobile redirect on iPhone (and no flash page elements hooray!)
• Everything is softer — from the palette to the scripted NYT Bestseller headband to the stitches in %-off badge. (It is going to be a big challenge to keep this fresh after a season or two.)

Old Homepage

Overall I like it, but it reminds me of the GlobeandMail redesign. A new person in charge inevitably leads to a change in the look and feel but it is not aggressive enough. No video editorial, no the61-style spectacle, no change to the shopping paradigm, less personality, and still no update to the availability status of out-of-stock items.

But good for them for spending the money. I was getting worried they were going to throw the whole operation under the bus.

My eyes are on the blog platform — I hope they add an events blog, and video, and pithy voices, and customer service… in other words I hope they come out from behind the corporate facade to really love and champion books.

Congratulations to all involved. It must have been hard work pulling this off. To the pub!

Did I mention video? http://tv.indigo.ca? Bueller?