I would avoid changes here, and keep the core focus strong.
There was once a famous cigarette commercial where a bruised he-man pronounced that he'd rather "fight than switch" (as if someone actually just punched him in the face over smoking preferences.) People are really like that in many instances. Where the perceived cost of switching is zero, folks still avoid it.
Yahoo changed its web format to "Yahoo Groups". (For everyone's good, ya know.)
BIG mistake. It was like they put us in this huge virtual cube farm, isolating and regimented, and it was hated. Even more than the new screen-hogging format itself, the small mental changes needed were very unwelcome. People left right away, because they didn't understand what, how, or why, re the change.
Once people figure out an involved system to their level of need, an "improved" system is no motivation to re-learn. Just the opposite. They will far more readily go to a new platform and learn that; seen as learning something new, vs learning how to un/re-learn the system known, just to make it different for someone's arcane reasons.
Motorcycle USA changed to the "facebook model" because their viewership was slipping slowly. It plunged to a trickle overnight and never recovered. The earth didn't need another Facebook. The Motorcycle Superstore is no more.
Anyhow, IMHO, big format changes were the death knell for those and other enterprises who decided their viewers wouldn't mind, and would even welcome confusion, for some nebulous purposes, soon to be revealed (or not.)
There was once a famous cigarette commercial where a bruised he-man pronounced that he'd rather "fight than switch" (as if someone actually just punched him in the face over smoking preferences.) People are really like that in many instances. Where the perceived cost of switching is zero, folks still avoid it.
Yahoo changed its web format to "Yahoo Groups". (For everyone's good, ya know.)
BIG mistake. It was like they put us in this huge virtual cube farm, isolating and regimented, and it was hated. Even more than the new screen-hogging format itself, the small mental changes needed were very unwelcome. People left right away, because they didn't understand what, how, or why, re the change.
Once people figure out an involved system to their level of need, an "improved" system is no motivation to re-learn. Just the opposite. They will far more readily go to a new platform and learn that; seen as learning something new, vs learning how to un/re-learn the system known, just to make it different for someone's arcane reasons.
Motorcycle USA changed to the "facebook model" because their viewership was slipping slowly. It plunged to a trickle overnight and never recovered. The earth didn't need another Facebook. The Motorcycle Superstore is no more.
Anyhow, IMHO, big format changes were the death knell for those and other enterprises who decided their viewers wouldn't mind, and would even welcome confusion, for some nebulous purposes, soon to be revealed (or not.)
