diff --git a/scrapy/commands/genspider.py b/scrapy/commands/genspider.py
index 21b5ba3ea..3e2e24b21 100644
--- a/scrapy/commands/genspider.py
+++ b/scrapy/commands/genspider.py
@@ -40,7 +40,7 @@ class Command(ScrapyCommand):
             help="Edit spider after creating it")
         parser.add_option("-d", "--dump", dest="dump", metavar="TEMPLATE",
             help="Dump template to standard output")
-        parser.add_option("-t", "--template", dest="template", default="crawl",
+        parser.add_option("-t", "--template", dest="template", default="basic",
             help="Uses a custom template.")
         parser.add_option("--force", dest="force", action="store_true",
             help="If the spider already exists, overwrite it with the template")
diff --git a/scrapy/commands/startproject.py b/scrapy/commands/startproject.py
index eeb04cda9..c266f75c4 100644
--- a/scrapy/commands/startproject.py
+++ b/scrapy/commands/startproject.py
@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ import sys
 import string
 import re
 import shutil
-from os.path import join, exists
+from os.path import join, exists, abspath
 from shutil import copytree, ignore_patterns
 
 import scrapy
@@ -53,3 +53,8 @@ class Command(ScrapyCommand):
                 string.Template(path).substitute(project_name=project_name))
             render_templatefile(tplfile, project_name=project_name,
                 ProjectName=string_camelcase(project_name))
+        print("New Scrapy project %r created in:" % project_name)
+        print("    %s\n" % abspath(project_name))
+        print("You can start your first spider with:")
+        print("    cd %s" % project_name)
+        print("    scrapy genspider example example.com")