How do users find website changes?
They say things come in threes - and we’ve picked up three websites who have made big changes to their websites in the past couple of days…
Propeller, Netscape’s social media site, has radically overhauled its interface … apparently, to catch the 3 to 5 demographic! They have enlarged their font size radically which reduces the amount of stories visible on the front page; changed the colours to bright primary ones; and added a big cartoon mascot! Some of the most user-unfriendly changes I’ve noticed are an increasing number of click-throughs on an already slow-loading site; ‘help’ links being far more prominent than the links you are actually trying to get ‘help’ for (eg multiple times when I was trying to view a specific group, my first view was the general help topic on ‘how to view’); and baffling help topics - for example, the site had an explanation of what a ‘url’ was on their submit page, just in case anybody finding themselves trying to submit a story on this social media site didn’t know!
Not surprisingly, the top propped articles for both days have been about how bad the changes are … the first one was removed, which has led to even more criticism of the site.
Another site close to Hubdub that has undergone some recent changes is Blubet. This site, which runs quizs and bets for virtual money, recently announced new items for sale at their BluBet Store - including real money tokens to buy their virtual currency. It seems there is some disgruntlement at the site selling out, and also not consulting with users before the changes were made, but I suppose the quiet ones are just continuing to play the site.
To round out the three, the Huffington Post has just launched its ‘Big News Pages‘ feature, where topics such as Obama, Amy Winehouse and Climate Change are given a unique page that aggregates all the blogs and stories specifically on that topic. We think we’ll be keeping an eye on the Technology one. This seems to have been the most popular change of the three - or perhaps the gushing comments are also attributable to giant crushes on Arianna herself.
Obviously, there is a fine line between refining a product for the better, and making radical changes without consulting the user base or at least explaining the rationale behind them. As always, we welcome comments on how you are finding Hubdub, and suggestions on changes you’d like to see!
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Tags: blubet, huffington post, propeller
