Hey All,
I had seen a well done comparison of the Blender website with the alternative commercial tools websites by Andrew Price. I was putting together a similar comparison for vector apps but the websites vary a bit more and reading what he had done is sufficient enough for people to get the point. I think that his analysis is just as valid for Inkscape's website too. Visit http://www.blenderguru.com/the-big-issues/ and do a quick search for "marketing" and scroll down just a little to see what his observations were. At this point I have to say that we should really follow a similar approach for our redesign too. Following are the links to a few commercial alternatives in the vector editor category, to compare their sites to ours.
http://www.adobe.com/products/illustrator/ http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Product/1281109933608 http://www.xara.com/us/products/designer/ http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/design_overview.aspx
My main observation? 3D software is marketed much more nicely and I actually think we should approach the redesign in a similar way. Realistically I think we can be a bit more playful with the design, but we should have something that communicates what inkscape is and what it's capable of in a better way for non-existing users.
What are other people's thoughts? If most people think the "similar to 3d apps websites" approach is good, I will post something to deviantart requesting designs there too.
Cheers, Josh