On the example of Marks and Spencer, Digg and Basecamp Ishikawa diagrams PARETO PRINCIPLE FIVE WHYs

1. Website redesign as a cause
ofconsumer dissatisfaction
IFF 2-2 student
Abdul Ruhulla
Moscow 2016

2. Design matters

3. 8% decrease in online

5. • 2 years of making new website design;
• Redesign cost: £150 million;
• Without possibility to return to old
website.
• Laura Wade-Grey, CEO of M&S, hired
team of 50 software developers;
• They attempted a startup innovation
approach to redesigning this website
• This was a replatform moving away from
the Amazon platform.
“We want to own our car, not rent it“
Laura Wade-Grey

6. The most common complaints of
visitors:
• Problems with registration and
resetting passwords;
• Different and bad navigation;
• Problems with finding items;
• Erratic delivery of items. Items
delivered to the wrong address;
Users were asking for the old website to be
brought back:

7. Abandoning of 6
million user database
Customers had to unlearn and
relearn how to use the website
Orders were delivered
to random addresses
Technical issues
and bugs
Unable to order items
Changing everything “overnight”
Customers got accustomed
to the old website
Need of re-registrstration
Previously stored details
were invalid
8% decrease in
online sales
Stock numbers were erratic, showing
that the item was out of stock
2 years of redesign
£150 million cost
50 software developers
Cause Effect• Or fishbone
diagrams
• Or cause-and-
effect diagrams
• Or Fishikawa
ISHIKAWA DIAGRAMS
WHAT WENT WRONG?

8. WHAT COULD THEY HAVE DONE TO AVOID IT?
Amazon experience:
1. Avoid radical redesign (“Big Launches”);
2. Constantly changing individual pages and elements, but
doing so on the basis of A/B or MVT testing;
3. Test how changes affect user behavior and business
performance;
4. Only after the analysis of the data to decide whether to
introduce a new design.
At this stage it would
take the learnings and
move towards the global
maxima with the redesign
process.

9. Traffic drop and loss of

11. • A site so popular that when it pointed its
users at website, it caused a massive
increase in traffic, making site not working
(“Digg effect”);
• Google wanted to buy site for $200
million, but it did not happen;
• Digg's v4 release on August 25, 2010, was
marred by site-wide bugs and glitches.
• Digg - one of the first news aggregator;
• The site's main function: to let users discover,
share and recommend web content, making it
viral;
• At its peak, over 40 million unique visitors every
month and over 236 million visitors annually;

12. • Digg left the main goal, stopped to follow its path and focused on
trends;
• After the redesign everything mixed up, and the site has lost its
peculiarity;
• In 2008, the company's market capitalization was about $160 million;
• in 2012 the site was sold for $500 thousand;
• It is possible that one of the reasons for the failure turned out to be redesign.

13. 0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Jan 2010 Feb 2010 Mar 2010 Apr 2010 May 2010 Jun 2010 Jul 2010 Aug 2010 Sep 2010 Oct 2010 Nov 2010 Dec 2010
Digg traffic
Reddit traffic
• In the first two months after the redesign of the site, traffic on Reddit
increased by 24%, with no major changes in the site;
• With high probability we can assume that some users switched from
Digg to Reddit.

14. 0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
0
5000000
10000000
15000000
20000000
25000000
30000000
35000000
40000000
45000000
v1 (2004 - 0%) v2 (2005 - 8%) v3 (2006 - 15%) v4 (2010 - 25%) v5 (2012 - 52%)
Unique users per month
Cumulative %
• v1 - Users could vote that page up ("digg") or down ("bury"). many websites added "digg" buttons to their pages, allowing
users to vote as they browsed the web. (0% of changes);
• v2 – new interface. New features included a friends list, and the ability to "digg" a story without being redirected to a
success page. (8%);
• v3 - specific categories for technology, science, world and business, videos, entertainment and gaming, as well as a "view
all" section that merged all categories. Peak of 40 million users monthly. (15%);
• v4 - marred by site-wide bugs and glitches. Digg users reacted with hostile verbal opposition. (25%);
• v5 – full redesign and change of concept. (52%). Digg “buried” itself, like a bad content on it before.
• Or the 80–20 rule;
• Or the law of the vital;
• Or the principle of
factor sparsity.
PARETO PRINCIPLE
WHAT WENT WRONG?

15. v1 v2
v3
v4
v5
Little change (Good) A lot of change (Bad)

16. WHAT COULD THEY HAVE DONE TO AVOID IT?
Reddit experience:
1. Do not be influenced by all
the trends that surround web
business;
2. Do not make a large-scale
redesign, which changes the
concept of the project;
3. Before rolling out a new
website design for the entire
audience, conduct A/B-tests
on a small proportion of users;
4. If it is possible, do not change
anything at all.
2010 2016

17. Drop of profit

19. • Basecamp Classic, launched in 2004;
• "the new Basecamp“ v2, launched in 2012.
Was considered by them as a failure;
• Basecamp Personal, a reduction of the 2012
version. Return to old design of registration;
• Basecamp 3, launched in 2015. With fresh
design.
• Basecamp is a web-based project
management tool developed by Basecamp and
launched in 2004.
• Basecamp offers to-do lists, wiki-style web-
based text documents, milestone management,
file sharing, time tracking, and a messaging
system.

20. The absolute number of
signups held steady, which fit
with company’s expectation, so
it wasn’t initially concerning
problem
When season of signups
started, there was no increase
in customers, as it was before

21. Loss of profits
Why?
Why?
Why?
Why?
Why?
Why?
Why?
Conversion of visitors
registration has declined
Due to seasonality to new
signups, but decline continued
A signup form to enter the
service greatly changed
Constant dispute which option is the
best: fast or well considered signup
No one thought to hold A/B-testing and dispel doubts
Absence of analysis of how authorization
steps affects the use of the service
FIVE WHYs
WHAT WENT WRONG?
Consumers were not satisfied with design

22. WHAT COULD THEY HAVE DONE TO AVOID IT?
Basecamp correction work:
1. No one ever knows what
will work best in a
particular case;
2. All changes should be
discussed within the team.
3. Decisions need to be
made quickly;
4. Focus on something one;
5. Do not refuse A/B tests to
check all hypotheses.

23. “This is the story of
how we made a
change to the
Basecamp.com site
that ended up costing
us millions of dollars,
how we found our
way back from that,
and what we learned
in the process.”
Basecamp
The net impact upon
finishing the test and rolling
out the change to 100% of
traffic was clearly visible:

24. Dealing with emerged
problems
• M&S eliminated bugs, but
design remained the same;
• Cost of project was very
high to just stop using
redesigned site;
• For big corporations 8% of
loss in the short run is not a
big deal.
• Digg lost its influence and
shares in news aggregator
industry;
• Completely changed their
concept to attract new users;
• For sites like Digg content
matters more than design.
• They stated that it is important to
manage A/B-testing, to prevent
doubt;
• Listened to their customers to
bring best ideas together;
• Combined new design with no
changes in features to satisfy
customers.

25. 20%
Use web analytics
services for conversion
analysis
20% 20% 20% 20%
Use of services for
the analysis of user
behavior on the page
Perform user tests
online or offline
Need of qualitative
audience analysis
Make a detailed
analysis of all the
important web pages
Conclusions

26. New Instagram
Customers are very sensitive to any changes,
which can lead to different consequences:
First significant redesign of
Instagram was met with bad reviews,
because people got used to it:

27. Get yourself prepared for
new VK design

28. Thank You for
attention

29. Reference
s
• http://www.digital-tonic.co.uk/digital-tonic-blog/went-wrong-marks-
spencer-website-redesign-made-lose-sales/
• http://readwrite.com/2010/09/23/digg_redesign_tanks_traffic_dow
n_26/
• https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3945-how-we-lost-and-found-
millions-by-not-ab-testing