Little Earthquakes (part II)

When introducing a set of changes to a web site, one can add them all at once, or slowly over a period of time. The former I consider the "big earthquake" method: nothing changes for a long time, and then suddenly everything moves!

The other approach is when I call "little earthquakes": small changes over a period of time. The end result is the same set of changes, but each change is smaller and more easily absorbed.

Your selection between these two methods has an affect on advertising.

Foregoing a large set of changes means foregoing the fanfare of the "new look". You cannot stick a label on your site with the words "new and improved" when you make minor changes to navigation. Or the next week when you fix some defects in your web application. If you do not have a large set of changes, the "new look" tag makes no sense.

A fair amount of advertising is based on "new and improved". It works for some things. I'm not sure that it works for web sites, or that it is even helpful to web sites.

With physical products like cars and detergent, the phrase "new and improved" may be effective in gaining new customers. Cars are durable goods and are purchased infrequently. The phrase "new" may spur people to purchase a car earlier than necessary. Detergent is a commodity. One soap is pretty much the same as another, and we tend to use the same amount of soap over time -- we don't increase our soap consumption because the soap improves. The label "improved" may encourage a customer to switch brands but it won't increase overall consumption.

Web sites are neither durable goods nor commodities. They are services, not products, and tend to be complex and non-substitutable. (LiveJournal is not the same as FaceBook, and neither are the same as LinkedIn.) The phrase "new and improved" works poorly for web sites: it doesn't make an existing customer purchase more of the service, nor does it convert a customer from another web site to yours. It *may* encourage people who are not using web sites to sign up with yours, but I suspect new sign-ups come from any advertising, not specifically "new and improved" advertising.

Exception: If you add a feature to your web site, something new, you may want to provide some "new services" fanfare. But only in the case of truly new services. Don't cry "new and improved" because you changed the colors or the shape of buttons.

Don't get me wrong: I am not advocating stasis. I am not saying that you should make no changes. I am recommending small changes over time.

If big earthquakes do nothing to gain new customers or increase sales, is there any harm to them? I think there is, in that they make things difficult for your existing customers. I find it easier to work with smaller changes; I learn them one at a time and I retain confidence in my abilities to use the web site. I find large, sweeping changes harder to work with.

So if big earthquakes gain you no business and possibly irritate your customers, and little earthquakes gain you no business (you aren't advertising them) but cost you no customers, which do you use -- and more importantly, what actions will gain you customers?

More on the "gaining customers" later. For now, I'm looking for little earthquakes.