[jwdunne]

The woman might not be a real customer of Basecamp, it's fairly common to use models, especially since consent for photos is pretty tough to get and keep (believe me, the amount of photos I've taken down due to change in consent...). The testimonial clearly states who it's from underneath such as 'Joy is a designer at Pitchfork'. What makes you believe this is made up? I'd be interested to know.

Also, testimonials have always generally had an impact on conversions when I've used them. If you have a product with a decent amount of unique visitors p/m and decent testimonial then split test it if you don't believe me - you have nothing to lose with a 30-day VWO sub and some time setting it up. I can't give access to the data I have access to, this isn't mine to give away, but great testimonials always help.

Also, the second mistake was "Pretend that no one says anything nice about you". Basecamp actually does the opposite by featuring a testimonial on the homepage, which is meant to be the right thing to do.

I think "manage your project" and then further "keep track of every file, discussion and event" is fairly decent brief description because that's exactly what it does. To the people I work with, an event is pretty straight forward: a calendar event (which is how you manipulate them in basecamp).

Either way, "Basecamp lets you write words, puts checkboxes next to them, then moves them around randomly" or "Basecamp lets you make todos" is never going to make a sale or pique interest. My notebook and pen does this fairly well.