Gandi Bar - Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - Comments

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 11 May 2011 09:54:22 -0400

Personally it is the "No Bullshit" tag that gave me pause to stop and take a serious look at Gandi as a provider. I like that Gandi is edgy and not the norm. I have had enough of the "norm" for hosting services. If Gandi is the company they portray themselves to be, then the no bullshit tag will deter no one.

Quality service will always be the final deciding factor. If someone chooses to move to another provider simply because of the no bullshit tag, I would expect they will be back soon enough once they taste the "bullshit" from other providers.

For the record I am an American. Admittedly, not a typical American, but American none the less.

-Jeff

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - Ansel Taft

Ansel Taft — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 16:37:00 -0400

Regarding the 'No Bullshit' tagline, I have to say that I'm ambivalent. Some days I like it, other days, I think it's crass and pretentious. More often than not, I lean toward the later.

I think for the oft-offended American crowd, 'No B.S.' would be softer and offend less often.

Cheers,

Ansel Taft

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - ugg style

ugg style — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 04:59:18 +0200

I've never given much thought to how I would die, but dying in the place of someone I love seems like a good way to go.
I only said it’d be better if we weren’t friends, not that I didn’t wanna be.
Try first to make their mistake sound less serious and then to reduce it to nothing at all.
Good news never goes beyond the gate, while bad news spread far and wide.
On festive occasions more than ever one thinks of one's dear ones far away.It is on the festival occasions when one misses his dear most.

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - Ryan (Gandi)

Ryan (Gandi) — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:15:39 +0200

Thanks RVB, there is massive filtering in place, however sometimes they get through.

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - rvb

rvb — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:42:26 +0200

again a way to link from a high ranking website like gandibar.net (PR 5 in google)... Isn't this blog supposed to be filtered, guys?

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - Joe (Gandi)

Joe (Gandi) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:52:35 +0100

Hi Anon,

When you enter your handle to login, you don't need to put the -GANDI at the end of it. It will log you in even without this. So the disappearing text shouldn't matter. I hope that helps, and glad you like the V3,

Joe

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - anon

anon — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 15:35:10 +0100

For most English speakers the no bullshit line is really too harsh for a serious company. It does make the site seem very unprofessional in the Americas. I used no bullshit in an email to you to match the phrasing, but it was something I had misgivings about including in a serious email too.

I do love the version 3. It runs smooth, though I can't enter a domain without the -GANDI text disappearing for some reason. This error needs to be fixed so that users can click on it to put their numbers in front of the text. I tried it in both firefox and internet explorer 8

Thanks for the nice sleek new format.

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - swissunix

swissunix — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:29:27 +0100

Nice, but the last line of text is hidden

see screenshot http://imagepaste.nullnetwork.net/v...

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - Ryan (Gandi)

Ryan (Gandi) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:39:05 +0100

@JG: We've tested our site on a wide range of browsers and had very few complaints from customers, so you must be using a browser that is not currently supported by our website. We would be pleased to look into problems you may be experiencing with it though, and for this we encourage you to write to our support team directly: http://en.gandi.net/faq/form_contac...

Concerning the Gandibar, we have not changed its code in 4 years The preview function that posts the message automatically is something that has always been there - it happens if you have chosen to have the website 'remember' you.

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - JG

JG — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 23:02:40 +0100

Oh and who all noticed that the button below to post your reply says "preview" but offers very little preview as it instead immediatly posts your reply ?

It's those small things that have made the new Gandi looks quality wise much worse then the old one.

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - JG

JG — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:58:36 +0100

Well a totally different look, which would be even better if it was properly working.

Wanted to buy a VPS share ... only to find out that the page doesn't work.
Compatibility mode or not it simply will not show anything more then a page with the slider and "Processor 0.33 dedicated core" ... nothing more then that.
No buttons, nothing.

Making it look fancy is one thing, making it a working thing is more important. If people can't click/order (even if it's only a minority) then that is business lost.
So no I do not like the whole restyling thing. I get the impression that "nice looks" was more important then "usability" "workability" and that makes me wanting to reconsider. Since for me usability and workability are more important for a business product/hosting/.... then "nice looks".

And I agree with some some of the posts above "no bullshit" is not a tagline you should use when wanting to attrackt/keep business customers. If you want to attrackt the home/hoby user ... sure. Business users ... no they will more likely turn away. The message behind it might be great, there are better worded slogans to bring it to the people. You don't want to be too bold in your slogan. While it might attrackt some it will turn away more people then you attrackt.

All in all I get the impression that you wanted to be too bold and too fancy and forgot about the things that made Gandi so great ... a hosting company that simply worked, basic but properly working and great performance, a company with the priorities in the right order.

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - prygoff

prygoff — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 14:56:42 +0100

You guys FANTASTIC. Seating in the very shit bandwith now but getting your site pages downloading even twice faster. This is not wht others mean on "upgrade". Bravo!

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - fgsfds

fgsfds — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 02:04:07 +0100

It's also interesting to note that so many people automatically assumed that the slogan was chosen by non-native English speakers, and offered tips on why the choice was inappropriate. The clear implication is that it's such an obvious faux pas (see what I did there?) that no English speaker in their right mind would have committed a company of Gandi's stature to such an unprofessional tagline. That ought to tell you something about how deeply your decision "resonates" with people who might otherwise consider recommending your (admittedly top-notch) services to fellow professionals.

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - fgsfds

fgsfds — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:55:00 +0100

As several people (Gandi staffers as well as customers) have pointed out, Gandi's business comes largely from word of mouth. Wendy also stated the following:

"This also means we're totally prepared to have a dialogue with everyone about their concerns, listen and then respond .... even if we've upset them! Only way we'll learn too."

Dialoguing with your established customer base about your choice of corporate slogan is fine, but the fact is that you simply will not be given the chance to dialogue with potential new customers who take one look at your slogan and go elsewhere. Worse yet, more than a few of your existing customers have stated unequivocally that they will stop providing the word of mouth marketing that you depend on because you've made it impossible for them to do so and maintain the level of professionalism that they require.

All of us managed to find you via word of mouth without the aid of crass marketing slogans. Many of us have helped others do the same. More than a few will simply stop doing so if the current tagline remains in place.

The fact that you even have to make the argument that "our crassness isn't like GoDaddy's crassness because we're super-serious about it" is frankly absurd. Can you see why this is a problem?

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - mark

mark — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:31:39 +0100

I should have clarified that the grey buttons on the grey-themed portions of the Gandi site (Hosting and SSL) are not out of place, but rather the grey "Search for another domain name" button that appears next to the green "Submit" button after looking up a domain name, and instances similar to that one.

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - mark

mark — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:23:19 +0100

I have to agree with some of the above posters regarding the "No Bullshit" tagline. I chuckled when I saw it, but I'd think twice before showing it to a corporate client, or recommending it to my own clients who buy their own hosting. Whether one finds it personally offensive is of little relevance; the problem is that it's well to one side of what's regarded as professional by a good portion of the English-speaking corporate world.

One other quibble: buttons that function identically but appear in different colors (specifically grey and another color) are problematic. More than a decade has been spent reinforcing the notion that "greyed-out buttons can't be clicked" (to the extent that "greyed-out" has entered the lexicon as a synonym for "unclickable", regardless of the button's actual color). Presenting a grey button (as you do on several pages) next to or near a colored one strikes me as a poor UI decision. It actually took me several runs through the various Gandi pages before I even tried to click one - I had simply been ignoring them (not consciously) up until that point on the assumption that they weren't "available" for clicking on.

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - vic

vic — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 18:11:47 +0100

A few remarks :

1) Jumping on the noBS debate : if you're really a "no bullshit" company, and from my point of view you are, then you don't need to write it as your slogan. It feels like marketing crap (pun intended) when the statement comes from the company.

2) Maybe I just need to get a little used to it, but the new design with bright colors, round corners, soft gradients etc..., looks like a generic e-commerce site ... Something not really professional, and especially not "noBS". And why use a completely different color scheme for hosting than for the rest of the site ? And here we find another slogan : "Hosting for Geeks" ... I don't know if this kind of communication works usually, but it wouldn't for me :-P

3) Regarding usability, the old sites had its hindrances, but the new one introduces new ones. Like the domain search feature, which is ridiculous. Who wants to register a "Generic" or "Americas" domain ? You register a .com or .fr or something specific. For this you need to go to another page. Why not use a dynamic tree which could be expanded under each broad category ? One page load saved this way. Then in the result page you need to click again for each searched domain. Why not display them all in the same page, since you will need to view them all anyway (you searched for them in the first place!). Again many mouse clicks saved.

4) Twitter, blogs, forums are by no means representative of your clients.

5) I hope I don't sound too harsh, it's just that I care And all the good stuff goes largely unspoken of. Sorry about that.

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - Joe (Gandi)

Joe (Gandi) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:18:46 +0100

Hi sgroarke,

Yes, you're quite right we've spent quite a lot of time on the website recently, though hosting work does continue in parallel, it has been a bit delayed. Anyway, now we will get moving on those things, the 2.6.27 kernal with Ubuntu 9.10 is being tested and hopefully released in the next couple of weeks. And we're already working on some later versions and further software/hardware improvements for the first half of this year.

Thanks,

Joe

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - sgroarke

sgroarke — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 10:41:04 +0100

Hi Wendy

To clarify ref my comment 60: the ipv6 beta as such seems OK. Trouble is that the day to day stuff pulls it (and other aspects) down.

To be specific: Ubuntu must be one of, if not the most, popular distro these days. Everyone knows that the new releases come out every 6 months, regular as clockwork (with varying degrees of quality!) So I expect them to be made available in your hosting environment just a regularly, albeit with a small lag for integration and testing.

Are they? Nope (although it's always hard to tell, as there's no simple "Status of Software" page I can go to to look - I'm expected to grope around in some wiki to try and find out) I've been beating up your folks about Ubuntu 9.10 for... a while. Looks like Ubuntu 10.2 is going to be out before you guys have given us 9.10!!!!

And as to the the Xen kernel provided... it's almost a joke it's so out of date.

So along comes the ipv6 beta. Looks good. But with the lack of up to date environment *around* it, it's a bit of a non-starter. Yes, I could install an ipv6 firewall manually (since Ubuntu 9.04 does not include Shorewall6) But why the heck should I bother??!? It's there in 9.10. If that was only available to us.

I don't want to divert the conversation too much, but wanted to clarify the issue for you. Gandi V3 fine, but don't lose site of the "hard core" please! Folks like me came to Gandi precisely because it seemed to be run by fellow engineers! Less javascript, more up to date kernels please!!

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - Wendy(Gandi)

Wendy(Gandi) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:07:10 +0100

Ethan/Arthur H: Many thanks for the constructive feedback, the No BS is an interesting idea and we'll bear it in mind as we get a fuller picture of response over the next few weeks. Incidentally our values strap line was originally created by the US/UK part of our team, not the French!

Sgroarke: Hi there sorry about the ipv6 beta. We're primarily an engineering/developer team and technology is the heart of our business. Feedback from our experts has always been and will continue to be fundamental to our business. I'll get more information about what's happened to the beta and the supporting infrastructure and we'll get back to you a.s.a.p.

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - sgroarke

sgroarke — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 08:44:42 +0100

Hi all.

Re "No bullshit". Not a dealbreaker, but very naff (as the English would say) and juvenile. As per 58 above (and I too am non-French living in France for.... an awfully long time!) modify it. Don't be proud - just change it and move on.

But, I'll tell you what IS a dealbreaker! The fact that I find this whizz-bang new site (V3) with the obviously large amount of time, money and technical effort that clearly lies behind it, at what I can only conclude is the expense of your services themselves.

Please don't misunderstand me: the new site (BS apart...) is lovely. Very pretty. Easy on the eye. But not a life-changing event for a user like me. I couldn't give a damn about it until you sort out the appalling lack of technical resource being given to your hosting services. I am fed up waiting MONTHS for regular, planned 6-month manufacturer updates to be made available to your customers. MONTHS. And up to date kernels? Years behind. Literally. You invite experts like me to take part in the ipv6 beta (which I did) but rapidly stopped since the supporting software infrastructure is totally lacking.

Please don't go beat up your engineers: they seem like nice, competent guys when I've communicated with them via support cases. But stop diddling around with web-sites and go fix the important stuff.

For every customer your V3 nose-job gains, you're going to lose customers like me very very soon if you don't get your engineering sorted.

I apologise that I've talked more, at least directly, about things not directly to do with the new site. But when you've been waiting forever for basic technical updates to be made to your PRODUCT, then get asked what you think about the new MARKETING, it's kinda the last straw.

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - Arthur H.

Arthur H. — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 12:43:23 +0100

"What do you think would convey the authenticity and values of Gandi in a way that was punchy and meaningful?"

Seconding the immediately above commentator. I would see no problem with putting "No BS" instead of actually spelling things out.

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - Ethan

Ethan — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 12:34:24 +0100

Hi Gandi -

Still exploring the new site but I appreciate the new design. You've continued the clean, professional and simple presentation that separates you from most domain registrars.

As an American living in France, I'm going to throw my two cents in on the 'no bullshit' debate. It personally doesn't bother me, but I'm less puritanical than many of my compatriots. I live in France after all

There is a very important distinction that needs to be made however. In American English, there is a huge difference between saying "no bullshit" and "no BS". People might say "that's a bunch of BS" in a normal conversation, but you would rarely hear "that's a bunch of bullshit" unless that conversation was antagonistic or angry. Saying "BS" can be taken in a lighthearted way, saying "bullshit" not so much. The subtlety is significant.

our "no bs" policy = honest and straightforward
our "no bullshit" policy = same concept, but potentially culturally insensitive to certain people and has an aggressive tone (aggressive "harsh" not aggressive "edgy")

So, if you are looking to continue growing an American English business, it's important to understand that the slogan isn't quite perfect. (though I understand that this slogan resonates quite well for the Frenchies)

An extremely happy customer of several dozen gandi .fr's
Ethan

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - BigErik

BigErik — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 16:21:26 +0100

I like it:D

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - Joe (Gandi)

Joe (Gandi) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 12:21:23 +0100

Hi Arthur,

Thank you for your long and considered note, this is valuable and appreciated feedback. The challenge we are facing is how to communicate our straight values in a way that doesn't sound diluted or empty. It is all too common for companies to claim to be many things nowadays, without conviction.

It is certainly not our intension to alienate or offend our clients, particularly our corporate customers from whom we have fought hard to earn trust. And we are certainly not on a path to shock marketing of any kind simply to gain notoriety.

You will note we have simplified the header and remove the slogan from the 'logged in' state of the interface, so in normal admin situations you and your colleagues will not see it. We have also toned down the logo itself to reflect the seriousness in which we make the statement. However, this is all an evolution, and things will continue to change.

What do you think would convey the authenticity and values of Gandi in a way that was punchy and meaningful?

Joe

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - Arthur H.

Arthur H. — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 05:48:39 +0100

I can understand the underlying sentiment behind your new, prominently displayed, declaration of `No B.S.`. I am a refugee from godaddy. I ran from that company for two reasons. Primarily, I left because of the tons of problems that I have had with their services over the years. However, I also left because godaddy's completely over the top (edgy, controversial) corporate image was not one that I wanted to be associated with in any way, shape, or form.

Gandi.net was the anti godaddy. Gandi is professional, straight-forward, and clean. As a professional working in a professional industry, I have felt confident recommending Gandi to numerous colleagues.

I was totally and completely shocked when I first saw the new "declaration" as part of the Gandi redesign. I am a professional, and I work in a professional industry. I ran from godaddy in part because it cultivated a crass, immature, and unprofessional corporate image. Now I see that Gandi is sliding in that same direction.

I was scheduled to do a presentation on integrating Gandi's internet services into the business that I work for. How am I supposed to do that now? I am actually relieved that I saw this change before the presentation. It would have been extremely embarrassing to encounter this crude declaration in a presentation in front of executive management.

I understand that this is a product of a reasoned and thoughtful process within your company. However, I want to communicate to you that there is very little possibility of acquiring corporate clients with this declaration so clearly visible on your homepage. to be entirely honest with you, I have never seen that before on a non-hacked internet page for *any* company and I have been around the web for a long time (online since before the web was cool actually, anyone else remember Bulletin Board Systems???).

Look, I understand that this is your company motto and that you are proud of it. You should be proud of your image, Gandi.net is a straight shooter. The problem is that the phrase "No Bull****" is not professional and carries an extremely negative connotation across cultural lines.

Telling someone that you are "Blunt but honest" is nice, but that will not be enough to address the concerns of those that see this. However, you are not communicating integrity by putting what most would consider to be a crude phrase in a plainly visible location on your front page.

I understand that, from a marketing perspective, you are probably trying to attract additional clients with the new look and this edgier slogan. However, you are needlessly alienating clients and prospective clients with this move. Not everyone shares the same cultural values and views, and - like it or not - there are people that will refuse to accept Gandi as a professional company with integrity once they see your front page. Why not just continue to offer the same exemplary level of service and replace the phrase with something else - something that will not alienate people?

Please note that other companies that: "deliver what they say, clean up if they don't, be honest and transparent and sometimes this means you won't like what they say. But have relationships of 'mutual respect'" do not seem to feature profanity prominently displayed on their home pages.

Look you guys run a tight shop here, and your company has delivered exemplary levels of service to me and those that I have refereed to Gandi in the past. It saddens me that I will not be able to refer people to this site. Put it on your about us page if you must have it, but please, Please, PLEASE remove it off the front page.

Thank You.

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - Wendy(Gandi)

Wendy(Gandi) — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 19:21:17 +0100

Hi thanks to everyone for their feedback and joining in the debate. We're just glad you feel able to say what you think and bluntly! We are listening and as you'll have already seen we are iterating what we do in response but without compromising our values.

We are a diverse team at Gandi. We're from the UK, France and US. We're both male and female, old and young with entrepreneurial and corporate backgrounds. And as you can imagine we strongly debated using 'No Bullshit' as our strapline. We felt and still do that it sums up our values clearly. We will deliver what we say, clean up if we don't, be honest and transparent and sometimes this means you won't like what we say. But it will be a relationship of 'mutual respect'.

It's not a joke, we take it seriously. For those worried about showing this site to their CEO's, compliance, lawyers or mothers just tell them we're blunt but honest and will look after their domains, cloud hosting and websites with the integrity this implies.

Let's see what happens, we're still listening ....

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - Stephan

Stephan — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 10:13:14 +0100

Collin Allen : Would you marry me ? ;D

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - Walter Ian Kaye

Walter Ian Kaye — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 08:39:59 +0100

PS. As long as you have date formatting options, how about an ISO date format option? YYYY-MM-DD. That's what I use mostly, and it's unambiguous.

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - Walter Ian Kaye

Walter Ian Kaye — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 08:34:26 +0100

Offensive tagline. Do NOT use the word "shit" -- either Bull, Bull****, or B.S. (I prefer just "bull").
Count me amongst those who were *physically* shocked and shaking fearing that the site had been hacked. Do you really want to scare the "shit" out of your customers? Because that is what you are doing when you post that vulgarity on your home page. It's been 20 minutes and my body is still malfunctioning. Thanks a lot. Ugh. That was very callous of you to have 4-letter-word cussing on your home page. I am not amused. And I *cannot* recommend this site to anyone so long as that vulgarity is there. C'est impossible! I would never subject any friend to cussing.

Now as to the page design, it is a severe pain. The old site was already too wide for my preferred window size (512px, btw), and this new one is significantly wider. Ergonomic? NO! That is not ergonomic. The text entry box at the bottom of this page is wider than my window. Very unprofessional UI design. Oh, and the font on the domain control panel is too large. And hey, what happened to the DNS hover on the domain list? It's gone missing. Please restore it.

This 3.0.0 design is ridiculous. Sorry, but it is. C'est tres mal.

I do not want to be cussed at.
I want pages that fit in my preferred browser window width, whatever that may be.
I want font sizes that match my browser preferences, not artificially magnified ones. These giant fonts hurt my eyes and waste space.

thank you.

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - John

John — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 07:15:03 +0100

As a slight improvement over your "No Bullshit" slogan, may I suggest:

"We reek of integrity."

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - Collin Allen

Collin Allen — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 03:27:52 +0100

I love it! I recently switched from GoDaddy to Gandi solely based on the now-prominently-displayed "No Bullshit" policy. When you're basically the only domain registrar on the internet that doesn't nickel and dime customers to death, I think it's appropriate to tout that in a bold way. I'm willing to pay a little bit more for each domain to not be harassed by unnecessary add-ons and upsells during the checkout process. The nice new design is just an added plus. Keep up the great work.

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - Brendan

Brendan — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 16:10:32 +0100

I see you changed the style of the tagline, which at least looks better. But I still prefer the previous design, and still do not like the tag line. As said above it gives the wrong impression of Gandi, I like Gandi but you are not helping yourselves by chosing the that tagline as it will put off a significant amount of people. I guess what I fail to understand the need for the change from the old, where you sales dropping or something?

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - richardp

richardp — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 04:21:50 +0100

The bullshit tagline is hopelessly unprofessional, and this shows a profound lack of understanding of the cultural significance of that word outside your European, male-dominated, young internet-professional circle. Maybe your team thinks it's cool, but your team is not a representative sample of users.

I have clients who use this site. Many of them will be offended by the tone and the vocabulary used. Let's be very clear here - you cannot use the word "bullshit" in a professional context in north America, unless you're marketing to 15 year-olds.

This is a serious mis-step from a company I respect. I'd like to stress that I am not personally offended by the word, but my clients will be. It sends entirely the wrong message. So please, I and my clients are looking for a professional domain registrar - something that you appeared to be before you started using the bullshit tagline.

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - manu

manu — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 00:27:47 +0100

mmm....1st login ..back to gandi was a huge shock..
Personnaly the design looks less professional than previoulsy...the global feeling I mean.
My 1st impression was.."this website has a prob".."do I am on the right gandi ?"...."mm..looks childish style"
I prefer the older version.
But, we are learning with mistakes, I guess

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - Steven

Steven — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 20:40:30 +0100

wow ... good jobs guys! VERY nice!

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - Brendan

Brendan — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:52:08 +0100

I can't say I like the new design or tagline. My first impression was also that the site had been partly hacked, I loved the previous design. Was clean and very useable. I’ve had a number of minor issues but have also liked the way gandi has operated since first using it 2002. I can’t say I will continue to use gandi with the current change as it just makes me cringe. If as you say its popular and works well I will be happy for gandi but I think a lot of people like above and myself will not continue to use your services, which would be a shame as it’s not the services at fault.

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - Joe (Gandi)

Joe (Gandi) — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:36:55 +0100

Hi Michael,

Thank you for a very well considered comment. We certainly appreciate your views, and those of all the customers that have commented. We are most heartened by the fact that people appreciate where we are coming from, and agree the values we are trying to communicate, though not always in the way we have expressed in its current form. We are gathering feedback from a variety of channels, both in UK, US, France and others, from blogs, tweets, emails and customer support. So we are listening and appreciate you taking the time to let us know.

This discussion and debate would not be possible without our customers taking part and we value that very much. Many thanks,

Joe

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - Michael

Michael — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 14:56:49 +0100

Hi,
I'm almost a customer (waiting on a mailed credit card) so I literally have no experience with you guys besides your website, but from my time exploring your company and services for the past couple months, I'd like to put in my two cents regarding the website redesign.

For me, what drew me to your site was not that it was 'no bullshit', but that it was professional (and looked professional, i.e. one unifying color scheme), was ethical (i.e. supported many important causes, some of which I hadn't even heard about previously), and did not rely on any marketing or affiliate programs to spread the site. I heard about it from word of mouth (as is your guys' intention), and the second I hit your old site I was like 'wow, this is the one'. When I explored the list of the causes you support, and saw your responsiveness and openness to your customers, I really couldn't believe my luck.

Regarding the redesign, the 'no bullshit' graffiti tagline isn't really something that helps; in fact, it has the opposite effect of immediately making someone unfamiliar with your company suspicious. Partly it is because it is something that you'd see on GoDaddy or similar sites ("Most Edgy!", "GoDaddy Babes!", in faux-graffiti). Partly it is because you are taking an attribute that customers assign to your company (that it is no bullshit) and then marketing that attribute. This would be equivalent to Google on their main page having 'trustworthy' written under the 'Google' or Apple having 'stylish' written in Papyrus as their trademark under their brand name. This is marketing itself (as #36 notes), and it is 'bullshit' in the sense that it's unnecessary filler from the actual information you already provide about the company and its services (which in themselves describes your company as 'no bullshit', but without so many (marketing) words).

Seeing some of the other comments (knowing that they are not representative of your customer base), I would perhaps even make the leap and say that your primary selling point is not that you are 'no bullshit', but rather that you are 'professional', and that your 'no bullshit' factor is in fact a subset of your professionalism.

I have no plans on changing my desire to sign up for your guys' services, just thought you'd be interested in a not-yet-customer point-of-view. The mere fact that you are open and willing to discuss these issues with your customers speaks more about your company than anything that could be written in graffiti. I just think being seen as 'professional' would make more business sense than being seen as 'alternative'.

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - Ryan (Gandi)

Ryan (Gandi) — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 11:27:38 +0100

@Don : thanks for your feedback! Concerning the new date format for domain expiration dates (now in the American format), we will change this so that you can specify the format that you want ("American" or "International") in your account settings. We will start, however, by simply reverting to the "International" format: dd/mm/yyyy

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - Nicolas (Gandi)

Nicolas (Gandi) — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 09:58:04 +0100

Tobias: it does indeed appear that we have some problems under Safari 4 , OS X. We are currently trying to fix this, though we have not yet had any reports of difficulties under chrome, could you please send us an mail to gandiv3@ with your version of chrome, OS... If you would like to search for a specific domain (with the extension), you can just add it in the form with the extensions that you want. Concerning the problem with wasted space, we have taken your feedback into consideration, and will release an improvement this afternoon or Monday. [edit: Ryan ;)]

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - Tobias

Tobias — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 07:54:00 +0100

My opinion about the relaunch:
The No bullshit thing is the smallest problem.
The hosting share configurator is not working in chrome (and safari?) . It stays at 2 shares if I move the slider.
The color scheme on the hosting part makes it hard to read. It looks childish, like a game clan side.
If I come to Gandi to lookup a domain name I do not want to look up all "generic" or "european" domains, I want to have .com, .org or a specific country. I have to make 3 clicks until I come to a page where I can do this.
Generally the new web2.0lish layout is screen space wasted.
If I would not be already a satisfied customer and I would come to this new page, especially the hosting part, I surely would not become a new customer. It looks amateurish.
Regards

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - Sam

Sam — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 07:33:40 +0100

Hi,
First congratulations on the new design and all the new upgrades. I manage over 20 domains on gandi and the company I work for manage 100s of domains else where. My boss didn't even bother looking at gandi because he stopped at the "BS" slogan and closed the browser. Regardless of your values, the slogan will end up cost you customers and business as it doesn't look professional.

With the new design, I decided to see if your hosting something I could try to manage some of my website, but the hosting section design is just wrong. The first rule in design is not to use a black background with white text (even if it looks cool) because no one can read more than a few lines before the text start bluring and mixing togather. Second, as soon as I tried to use the custom slider, I lose the page and nothing else work (IE8).

Hope this comments will be helpfull.

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - Jake

Jake — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 05:40:39 +0100

Well done on the new site launch.

Did you ask a bunch of Gandi customers what they thought of your new strapline before you decided on it? In the UK, this term is offensive and you wouldn't have had to ask more than a handful of people before you saw a theme.

May I suggest you ask users for alternatives? I'll kick off...

No sweat

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - ak

ak — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 03:17:56 +0100

I enjoyed the Gandi brand in part because it was a bit higher-brow. Faux-graffiti swear words really detract from that. Kind of adds some bullshit to your non-bullshit, if you dig.

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - Kristen

Kristen — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 01:02:38 +0100

Take the no bullshit OFF - We refer a lot of our valued clients and potential clients to you. Also, many times we have a domain name parked until we finish our client's website and your website comes up. It is not edgy it is dumb....I could have thought of a million better taglines for you all. I am telling you - no bullshit - it is the wrong move.

Please consider this.

Thanks-
Kristen

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - Guilherme

Guilherme — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 23:34:35 +0100

While I get the use of "No bullshit" as a political statement, the offending part is clearly the graffiti-like visuals of it. If you type it in proper kerned Helvetica or FF Meta, it will look much more acceptable and professional.

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - Stephan

Stephan — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 23:14:42 +0100

Guys, i'm like Sami, a guy in a suit is not what I need to be convinced the company I'm dealing with is professional. Once again, you came to us because you KNOW we are serious and honest, because we have a 10 years proven track record and your experience is (normally) very positive. So I'm sure you'll manage to demonstrate to your customer how good was your move when you chose us.

Be sure we are and will be doing everything to earn his trust as hard as we did to earn yours.

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - John Goerzen

John Goerzen — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 23:14:15 +0100

Another take on the "no bullshit" is very simple.

If I can't show the homepage of our domain registrar to my boss, our 70-year-old controller, then you're doing something wrong. If your website is going to be added to various corporate proxy filter lists soon, you're doing something wrong.

Again, I'm not personally offended, but it does convey a "not serious enough for business use" message.

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope - John Goerzen

John Goerzen — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 22:52:08 +0100

Guys, I personally appreciate the "no BS" attitude, and I agree it fits you and is cool.

But this makes the site not really work-appropriate in many cases, and I think makes you look amateurish. As one of my colleagues said, "We left GoDaddy for Gandi in part to get away from the inappropriate site."

If I wasn't already a customer, it would make me hesitate. Do I want to put something as appropriate as a domain name in the hands of a company that doesn't sound professional?