And if the changes are actually just bad by and large (I’m inclined to agree with the above infographic about Reddit) then why do websites get worse, rather than better, over time?
I think the reason it seems bad is because old users like you are not who the company is trying to attract. They’re trying to attract new users. Or the marginal user. So they make their website, logo, and interfaces more to that marginal user’s pleasure. I’d claim that according to that metric, which is of course a very different metric than the pleasure of the people presently on the platform, the websites you list all did very well.
I’d claim that according to that metric, which is of course a very different metric than the pleasure of the people presently on the platform, the websites you list all did very well.
You’d have to provide some compelling argument that the website redesigns actually do better at this, though.
Here are two counter-arguments:
The Schelling Fence argument: the current app had a good reason for looking like it looked, and it was battle-tested. The new design has no such advantage.
Maybe you know your redesign will piss off your current user base, but you care more about acquiring new users. Still, this is not cost-free. For example, this reliably results in terrible review scores on app stores. And on reddit, some pissed-off reddit users used bots to delete all their old comments, which made the entire website worse for all users old and new alike.
Finally, let’s take one example of a recent redesign which looks vaguely prettier at a glance, but where the functionality is just straight-up worse: Fitbit’s recent app redesign (example post) made information much harder to see and interpret, and that in an app designed for health & exercise tracking.
You seem possibly right, looking at some data with ChatGPT. It collected the following data:
Year
MAUs (Millions)
Growth Rate (%)
2013
90
95.65
2014
174
93.33
2015
199
14.37
2017
250
25.63
2018
331
32.40
2019
430
29.91
2020
619
43.95
2021
861
39.10
2022
1195
38.79
and graph:
2019 seems to have had a decrease in growth compared to 2018, maybe that’s attributable to the redesign? If nothing else, the redesign doesn’t look so impactful.
Where are these Reddit numbers coming from? I can’t actually find 2013-2017 in the supposed sources, and they look like garbage: how do you go from a >90% annual growth rate to <15% in a single year? And when I search for relevant numbers, it looks like those early numbers might be ‘unique visitors’, which is usually a completely different metric from logged-in users like MAU.
I think the reason it seems bad is because old users like you are not who the company is trying to attract. They’re trying to attract new users. Or the marginal user. So they make their website, logo, and interfaces more to that marginal user’s pleasure. I’d claim that according to that metric, which is of course a very different metric than the pleasure of the people presently on the platform, the websites you list all did very well.
See also: The tyranny of the marginal user
You’d have to provide some compelling argument that the website redesigns actually do better at this, though.
Here are two counter-arguments:
The Schelling Fence argument: the current app had a good reason for looking like it looked, and it was battle-tested. The new design has no such advantage.
Maybe you know your redesign will piss off your current user base, but you care more about acquiring new users. Still, this is not cost-free. For example, this reliably results in terrible review scores on app stores. And on reddit, some pissed-off reddit users used bots to delete all their old comments, which made the entire website worse for all users old and new alike.
Finally, let’s take one example of a recent redesign which looks vaguely prettier at a glance, but where the functionality is just straight-up worse: Fitbit’s recent app redesign (example post) made information much harder to see and interpret, and that in an app designed for health & exercise tracking.
You seem possibly right, looking at some data with ChatGPT. It collected the following data:
and graph:
2019 seems to have had a decrease in growth compared to 2018, maybe that’s attributable to the redesign? If nothing else, the redesign doesn’t look so impactful.
Where are these Reddit numbers coming from? I can’t actually find 2013-2017 in the supposed sources, and they look like garbage: how do you go from a >90% annual growth rate to <15% in a single year? And when I search for relevant numbers, it looks like those early numbers might be ‘unique visitors’, which is usually a completely different metric from logged-in users like MAU.
… I should not have trusted ChatGPT so much. Sorry & thanks for the time correcting my mistake.