Dear sulfericacid,

Many people are warning you that randomly switching the layout and look-and-feel of your site is likely to harm your site's usability. However, only you are in a position to make that call. Maybe you know something that we don't. Maybe your site is all about art and exploration, or maybe your users come to your site for an "experience" and not to find information, do their jobs, or purchase a product. In any case, it's your call to make.

What's particularly interesting about your situation is that it provides a perfect opportunity for all of us to learn something. Is the common wisdom – that swapping UIs frequently is "bad" – applicable to your site?

Let's find out!

Let's design a simple experiment to measure the effect of random UI swapping on your users:

  1. Partition your users into two equally sized groups: the experimental group (those who will be subjected to random UI swapping every time they log in) and the control group (those who won't). To eliminate bias among the UIs, each user in the control group should be randomly assigned one of the two new UIs, which then becomes that user's UI for the duration of the study.
  2. Whenever users log in, determine which group they are in and select their UIs accordingly.
  3. After a month or so, analyze your logs, site feedback, etc. to determine if there is a significant difference in behavior between the experimental and control groups. (For example, if common wisdom is correct, we would expect that site usage among experimental-group users to drop off w.r.t. control-group users.)

Sounds like fun, don't you think? When it comes to your site, care to prove the experts wrong? (Or right?)

Cheers,
Tom

Update: clarified wording.

Tom Moertel : Blog / Talks / CPAN / LectroTest / PXSL / Coffee / Movie Rating Decoder

In reply to Re: Random templating by tmoertel
in thread Random templating by sulfericacid

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