Interesting. We're working on a redesign and while offering a choice between old and new is probably not an option in our case it's interesting to see how just having a choice has changed user perception. Something to play around with :-)
3
I have stopped using some products after they did a redesign. The one that really hurt personally was Chartbeat. They had such a great product that I used every day. And then suddenly they changed everything in a single night. The new version missed the features I used. I asked for them and they said they don't have those features in the new version. So, I had to look for it somewhere else. Unfortunately, there were no good alternatives. They had something and they weren't aware of it. That's sad.
That's why I am always very careful about releases. We always give people an option to go back to the old version and then when they choose so, we ask them to enter "Why" in a big textarea question. We resolve the issues and push users back to the new version and keep doing this until almost everyone is happy.
The story I told in the post is a special case though. We usually do not keep the old versions around. It creates too much maintenance work. What we found was some people really needed the classic (all questions on the same page) forms or they would leave, and some people swear by the new format! So, we did something we've never done before and we decided to keep both versions.
3
Nice article. Thanks for sharing.
1
Curious how you gauge when a choice is important to your customers and when it leads to choice fatigue?
1
By testing.
We tested and found that if we give them both options, 20% more new users starting becoming active users. This was not something we expected. But, we respected the numbers and kept both versions.
Great piece Aytekin! I really like how active and open you are on Indie hackers. Very encouraging!
Reminds me of this Jeff Bezos talk on customer obsession: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvnQWvlxUMQ
Interesting. We're working on a redesign and while offering a choice between old and new is probably not an option in our case it's interesting to see how just having a choice has changed user perception. Something to play around with :-)
I have stopped using some products after they did a redesign. The one that really hurt personally was Chartbeat. They had such a great product that I used every day. And then suddenly they changed everything in a single night. The new version missed the features I used. I asked for them and they said they don't have those features in the new version. So, I had to look for it somewhere else. Unfortunately, there were no good alternatives. They had something and they weren't aware of it. That's sad.
That's why I am always very careful about releases. We always give people an option to go back to the old version and then when they choose so, we ask them to enter "Why" in a big textarea question. We resolve the issues and push users back to the new version and keep doing this until almost everyone is happy.
The story I told in the post is a special case though. We usually do not keep the old versions around. It creates too much maintenance work. What we found was some people really needed the classic (all questions on the same page) forms or they would leave, and some people swear by the new format! So, we did something we've never done before and we decided to keep both versions.
Nice article. Thanks for sharing.
Curious how you gauge when a choice is important to your customers and when it leads to choice fatigue?
By testing.
We tested and found that if we give them both options, 20% more new users starting becoming active users. This was not something we expected. But, we respected the numbers and kept both versions.