Changing Content Presentation Influences how we Interact with Organisations

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You’ve Changed…

As humans, we learn to see and recognise. We are not born with an in-built identification system for everything in the world, so we learn to identify and come to terms with the world around us through language and reinforcement. We may be born with the gift of vision, but it is society that teaches us to actually see.
Perhaps it is this fact, more than any other that creates such uneasiness among regular website visitors when that site changes its format. We become used to receiving our content in a very specific way. We have learned to recognise a blog, or an online magazine, or a news website in a certain, familiar format. So changes to that format mean re-learning the rules of engagement, which is often frustrating or at least bemusing.

The need for change

Once we are familiar with a site, our eyes pick out what we seek almost automatically, and (perhaps crucial in understanding why websites restructure so frequently) our eyes block out that which we don’t – like advertisements, the lifeblood of many content-based websites and blogs, especially in the media world.
It stands to reason, then, that perhaps this disruption in our daily routine, this jarring to what we know and accept, is intended to get us looking around the page once more, stumbling across advertisements that our eyes would previously skim without registering.

The BBC News website changes its format frequently, and has applied several major alterations twice in the last 12 month period. Editor Steve Herrmann clearly understands this attachment to the familiar, as he blogs about the changes before each one takes place in an attempt to prepare regular users for the difference.
We’ve blogged before about the reactions users have whenever they log into their Facebook profile to find it altered in some way, and for some months Twitter offered users the opportunity to use the ‘old Twitter’ as well as explore the ‘new Twitter’ until the website officially changed over, in a preemptive move to prevent too much confusion.

How to change your site’s format without losing visitors

People are never immediately thrilled with a change. Change takes time to adjust, and as more and more websites realise this, it’s likely that the process of change will be approached in a more consumer-facing manner.
Just as language is a cultural code of understanding, so too is all content. Words or pictures on a screen, no matter how high quality it may be, are not necessarily good content. To create good content much more must be taken into consideration than the ideas or information held therein. The vessel with which you convey this content is inextricably linked with how users will digest it, as is the way in which users learn to recognise what they are receiving.
Change is good, and often necessary, but in the world of content production, it needs to be eased into.