T'was the week before Christmas in 2008, and we had just updated the email template to the blue-themed template that you've come to know (and hopefully love). 

It feels like only yesterday I was frantically iterating through that template with Bob until we were satisfied with it... And yet, in internet-time, a year and a half is like a whole geological era, and then some.

The blue template served us well. It was cohesive and recognisable, and though we did tweak it many times over the last 18 months, it largely worked as it was. One of the realities of internet startups, though, is that every single day you learn more about your customers and what they want. After 18 months of listening to you, we decided that it was time to make more than a tweak.

Last week, we released a new email template. It's clean, simple, and focused. One of the key philosophies we adopted with the new template is that rather than offer up all the information that could possibly be of interest (as was the case in some of the earlier emails, with long FAQs and lists of data), every email we send you should be clear, quick to read, and make it absolutely obvious what (if anything) you're expected to do. From now on, if you see a link in our templates, you probably want to click on it.

Here's an example of what you might receive if you were sent files in a project being run by the fictitious firm "Woobius Architects":

Apart from the simplicity, one more thing you might notice is a shift in emphasis on the matter of branding. From now on, project emails will be branded with the name of the company running the project, rather than with "woobius" (the "powered by woobius" branding will take a much smaller, less prominent position at the bottom of the email). In addition, project emails sent via Woobius now have subjects that start with the name of the project (in [square brackets]), rather than with the less useful "Woobius:".

The reason for this is simple: Woobius, though built, maintained and extended by us, is, within the context of a project that you create on it, your product, that you offer to your clients. Most of the time, the people you invite to your projects on Woobius don't know what Woobius is - nor should they need to know. They're being invited to your project hub, which happens to be hosted on Woobius. The email templates should reflect that, and now they do.

Do let us know what you think about this, by emailing us, commenting here, or even using the feedback tab in the application!