Buyer-First Website Reviews: Basecamp with Jason Oakley

About this series: Buyer-First Website Reviews is a recorded version of our Buyer-First Bites Newsletter.

Each month one of our advisors will on-the-spot review a SaaS website against the best practices from our 2024 B2B Buyer First Best Practices Report:

• Accessible: How convenient is it for buyers to book time with a sales team
• Visible: How public is the pricing and packaging
• Usable: How easy is it for buyers to get hands-on and use the product

See below how our advisor, Jason Oakley breaks down the website, Basecamp.

Watch the full recording or see the highlights below:

For each bite, we've summarized that section and included the corresponding clip.

Bite #1: Basecamp Above The Fold Imagery

Basecamp’s website does a great job in three main areas: being very clear on their point of view, making it easy for buyers to feel good and confident about their purchase, and clearly defining who their product is for.

One things I expect to see above the fold is an image of the product. They took away the product image and replaced it with these two people talking.

One theme across their site is that they know people already have some sort of solution. They might be using tools like Notion, spreadsheets, Asana, or ClickUp.

They focused on two people having a conversation, and the person on the left is using the old tools and the person on the right is a person using Basecamp. Every time you refresh it, they're having different conversations.

The person on the left is talking about how complex these things are, how hard it is to stay on top of everything, and the person on the right is like, I switched to Basecamp, and it's awesome.

They are trying to get people to switch and come to Basecamp and make them feel confident about making that decision.

Bite #2: Product Videos + Feature Pages

I really love this explainer video because it doesn't start with a narrative that goes through this long-winded, here's what's happening in the market and trying to paint some picture of value.

It gets right into you're trying to manage a project and here's how you do it in Basecamp.

They bring you into this rooted design, mock use case and walk you through how to manage a project in Basecamp. And it's done in three minutes.

On their homepage and feature benefit pages, they have screenshots with little tool tips on some of them. It's full screen and true to the actual UI of the product.

These pages are basically like a product demo, just broken down into different screens.

One thing that they'll continue to drive home on their site is that don’t have all the same features as something like ClickUp or Asana.

They give you just the essentials. They're a simpler product, but it's what small businesses need.

Bite #3: Homepage Persona Messaging + Social Proof

They make it really clear who their product is for. They talk about this idea of the underdog and champion the small business owner. Throughout their site, they're very focused on that particular buyer.

At the bottom of the homepage, they have a section called Change for the Better. They asked their customer “What changed for the better since you switched to Basecamp for project management?”

I love how all their social proof is focused on that same theme. And so all of these quotes make you think, oh, I should probably switch and help make you feel confident.

Bonus Bites

Comparison Pages

They created this an offshoot page that they call Night and Day. In my opinion, one of the things that can help your buyers buy is well-done comparison pages.

I think a lot of people need help comparing you against other alternatives, and this is an example of a comparison page that's you versus a whole other industry

They bucket all of these tools. It's all this mishmash of either these super complex tools or multiple ones that you have to piece together.

They also have testimonials from people before they switch to Basecamp and then after they switch to Basecamp.

Pricing Pages + Bill of Rights

When you look at their pricing page, one of the things that sticks out right away is “Another 1611 organizations signed up last week”.

A lot of companies use this title for something like pricing or packages. They use this to again, give you confidence.

They make their pricing really simple. Two plans, $15 per user per month, or just a flat $300 per month for unlimited users. They even do a great job here of helping you compare the cost of Basecamp to other tools, and there is a big difference.

They also have a customer bill of rights. That has different articles like “Own the data in your account”. They're very big on privacy, fast and friendly product support, control your data, and request features.

Audience Specific Pages

This page is forward slash small. It's dedicated to highlighting who their target customer is - “We're built for the fortune 5,000,000”.

It's a letter from their CEO, Jason Fried, and it's all talking about who their ideal customer is. They champion what they call the underdog.

Another interesting one is their take on an FAQ. It's not like a typical FAQ, because the answer to everything is just yes. They show all kinds of things that they allow you to do, probably common questions that they get, and the answer is just simply yes.

Enjoyed Jason's bites? Get monthly snack-sized B2B buyer-first website reviews through our Buyer-First Bites Newsletter.