Bill Myers

Why sometimes change is a bad idea

A few weeks ago, a graphics designer convinced John Cooksey that his company's profitable web site selling video components was 'boring' and needed sprucing up. John was a little reluctant to make changes, but the designer persisted and eventually John decided to hire the designer to add some 'pizazz' to the site.

This week the new design went into place. And sales from the web site immediately fell by almost 70%.

At John's request, I visited the site to see if I could find a problem. On the main page of the site I was greeted with a 'pop-up' message advising me I couldn't view the site unless I loaded a 'shockwave' plugin. Like many web users, I chose not to load the 'plugin'.

Without the Shockwave plugin, the site no longer worked. The company name was mispelled, the menu buttons didn't work, the search button didn't work, visitors couldn't find products and visitors couldn't place orders.

I relayed this information to John over the phone - and he was furious. He had been assured by the designer that the new flash movie and animation which appeared on every page of the site (as part of the logo and navigation menu), wouldn't cause problems. True, the animation wouldn't cause problems for those visitors who chose to load the flash plugin, but it did cause problems for everyone else (including the search engine robots).

Now, John is scrambling to restore the older 'boring' look - the one which generated almost twice as many sales.

The moral: Don't make changes just for the sake of change. And when you do make changes, make changes to please your customers, not your site designer.