Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

A Bit of Nostalgia goes RIP
The last couple of days I've been doing an upgrade of a client's site. It was the first commercial site I built and I remember all the thought and effort that went into it.

There was a certain navigation feature I developed when I first built those pages that now is being laid to rest. My thought back then was link each order page to as many relevant other order pages as possible so people could wander around the site until they found what they wanted.

I put dozens of hours into all those links on hundreds of pages. And I've let those links stand for far too long. After all, wandering is not what we want potential buyers to do. We want them to narrow down their choices and buy, not keep getting distracted by the lure of wondering where that next link will lead.

So with this large-scale update, I'm finally dismantling all those links. It's a long tedious job, and I keep thinking of how much similar, long, tedious work went into creating them in the first place. But the bottom line is making the bottom line the best it can be. And eliminating distractions on the order pages is one way to do that.

No, I'm not taking away options. Over the years, careful testing has helped us develop a much more efficient way of helping people find what they're looking for. Yeah, there's a tinge of nostalgia at seeing all that work from my first commercial website go away. But it's also a realization of growth.

You can't hang on to something just for sentimental reasons. Business is about serving customers. And if another way of guiding them will serve them better, then it's time to move on and leave the old, first attempts behind.
Jeff