Breefield.com: Revamped

Zappos recently responded to Andrew Wilkinson, if you hadn’t been watching that unfold you should really catch up. It’s quite an interesting read. I don’t bring this up because I want to discuss it at all. Rather, I’d like to take a point from Brian Kalma and expound upon it.
He reiterated multiple times that: “We’ve had to very carefully figure out how to evolve (never redesign) our site experience.”

On one hand I agree, to preserve a user’s familiarity with a website one should never completely redesign their website. Users would be thrown off, possibly confused, and maybe even leave thinking they’d typed in the wrong URL.

But, on the other hand, I find it to be this mentality that keeps the web from progressing. You have this completely obsolete browser, IE6, which has stayed around so long because users are afraid of change. Nobody is willing to force this change on them, as they don’t want anything to do with the hate-storm that would surly come down upon them.

I don’t want to let this post get too lengthy – especially since it isn’t “really” relevant to my new website redesign. But, I think something is to be gleaned from this paradox. That groveling crowd, people who don’t really have a clue when it comes to the internet; they are not going to care as much as the people who give a crap. I say this for a few reasons, the foremost being that I don’t think their complaints will make it far. If they’re confused by a website redesign, the last place they would know to go is Get Satisfaction to actually do something about their UX. They will adjust far easier than you think. If they could navigate their way around an awful website, they can do it with a brand new website.

In conclusion, my point is that businesses shouldn’t be half as afraid of pissing off those who aren’t web-savvy, by updated a website. They should be more afraid of people like Andrew Wilkinson coming along and causing a ruckus my suggesting some changes. But then again, that still might not be a bad thing. Publicity is publicity.

I feel like there is a lot more I could say about this. I’m just going to leave it at this, hopefully someone will comment. I didn’t plan out this post at all, next time I will for sure. So please, subscribe to the RSS feed! Oh, and let me know how you like the new site.