To preface: I joined College Confidential in January. The company I work for took over management of the site in Dec and implemented a new registration system to brainstorm integrating with our other products. Final April the previous owner of the site implemented a new theme. The new theme has had a lot of benefits. Chief among them: the site at present works on phones. Just I believe the cost of the changes in terms of usability has been loftier. The adept news is nosotros can fix it.

Background

Using the Wayback Machine, we tin run into what the site looked like last year:

Screenshot of College Confidential in March of 2019

I've cropped out the topbar, sidebar and other navigation hints. This is the cadre experience of browsing our discussions. Here's what that same general area looks like at present:

Screenshot of College Confidential in March of 2020

For this prototype, I've cropped out everything above the fold where nosotros highlight content. The new theme allows that to take up far more space than the previous pattern. It also spends far less space on the discussion topics since it hides most of them behind a menu ("Acme Forums", "Higher Admissions and Search", etc.). To summarize the effect:

  • The erstwhile pattern emphasized discussion topics.
  • The new pattern emphasizes specific articles or threads.

What we lost

Vanilla gives usa a look back over the previous yrane in their dashboard:

Graph of threads on College Confidential over the last year

If you look at the greyed out graphs at the meridian of the prototype, you can see we haven't lost much in terms of users. We always become a lot of new people in Dec and March. This year is no different. What is different is we aren't seeing the usual increase in new threads. That means there are fewer than normal new replies, which means we have fewer pages for people to look at. That ways fewer pageviews, which is the number we are tracking to meet our goals.

Now at that place are many possible reasons for this:

  • New theme
  • Registration changes in December
  • Competition from sites like Reddit and Niche
  • Changes in pupil behavior (perhaps they don't wait to forums for guidance anymore?)
  • COVID-19 (just that only explains this month)
  • Crumbling2 community

I can't (nonetheless?) prove the blueprint is the master culprit, only I practice see some evidence pointing in that direction.

DC Urban Moms (and Dads) don't like our site

Brace yourself. Here are some quotes from a thread chosen What Happened to College Confidential?

  • "Last year it was abuzz with college admission updates. This twelvemonth, crickets. Where is everyone?"
  • "Reddit"
  • "It'south a ghost town and I accept a senior this year so I had a reason to check out some specific college threads there and there's simply cypher but Chance Me's."
  • "Niche"
  • "I retrieve it'due south the update to the forums - the layout and design. I used to read there all the time but afterwards the change I rarely visit."
  • "To make matters worse they decided to implement a new "sign in" procedure (Using your email address instead of your screen name) which for some reason has locked out many people..."
  • "The clique of cat lady boomer moderators and serial posters drove everyone normal away."
  • "Information technology's very easy to get doxxed on there—and everything posted is permanently on Google."
  • "I did find some practiced information that helped DS arts and crafts his school specific essays on CC."
  • "I used it concluding year for some very specific information virtually going to school in the Britain. There definitely were a few forum doyennes. However, they were mostly helpful. What killed it for me was the redesign. It's hard to find things now."
  • "New security updates sound like a ruse to more than precisely data collect.3 Site is sketchy. It was really helpful like xv years agone. Worthless at present."
  • "I could bargain with the over zealous moderators, merely the visual mess is too much."
  • "I think some of the forums are useful, especially Athletic Recruiting, but I hate the new format. Things are so hard to notice."
  • "I run across posters getting "banned" and put in "time out" and always wonder what they did to become in trouble! I guess if you phone call someone out, you get banned."
  • "Yeah, the changes likewise CC are clear proof that website layout, design, and user-friendliness are essential. It seems so obvious, but some sites really become it wrong. I used to visit CC a fair amount a few years ago, and did learn quite a bit from it, but it's SO hard to navigate now, and there's so much wasted white infinite, it'south impossible to apply anymore."
  • "It is very difficult to discover anything on the site and a lot harder to track threads. There has been a lot of conversation about these difficulties on the parents forum, but yous really have to know what you're looking for in order to use the site. Which kind of defeats the purpose."
  • "I didn't heed the update to the format, simply now I tin't even sign in."
  • "My son got some very useful information on what was of import for a college specific essay. It helped him craft information technology in a fashion that would entreatment to admissions."
  • "I notice that the people who hang out there Only hang out there. Once upon a time, it was like a pooling of resources. Maybe the redesign just drove away the people who were already on multiple sites doing research."
  • "When did that happen? I loved visiting information technology in 2017 and 2018, but find the new format so offputting that I rarely get there now. I did non have the negative experiences with forum moderators or posters others mention--all accept been friendly and helpful. I imagine information technology depends which forums and threads you lot visit."
  • "But clearly the platform has been abased by many - for many reasons. Personally I found information technology impossible to navigate even earlier the redesign."
  • "CC is just completely unusable since the update."
  • "I wonder if they'll revert dorsum to the old version?"

That'due south a lot, but the picture it paints is that it's hard to observe the useful information CC has because of the unfamiliar navigation system. Now to be articulate, DCUMiv is the oldest of old-schoolhouse forums. Of class people who post there are going to detest newer designs. Just that's a big function of our audition also. And information technology's likely the audition who prefers the older pattern has been almost active posting new threads also. (Plus the design is objectively bad every bit I volition demonstrate momentarily.)

This anecdotal data also points to the other possible causes I mentioned previously. Perhaps the theme, equally the most visible attribute of the site, is mentioned more oftentimes than other problems. Notwithstanding, I don't run across anyone defending the design or the registration system. And we have fixed nigh of the problems people had registering, so information technology's probably not as much an issue as information technology was in December when there were some problems. No, I'd say the problem is that we done messed up the pattern.

An bated virtually whitespace

I've seen a ton of user feedback about blueprint changes and it'southward well-nigh universal that someone volition complain about "wasted whitespace". Sure plenty: "Way too much whitespace when reading on my phone." Designers seem to hear this criticism to hateful something like:

I don't like your design aesthetic.

And if that were what users meant, I'd agree we can totally ignore the criticism. Just it's not what they hateful. Instead the internal dialog goes something like:

Hmmm... This site has changed. Looks like there's more empty space on the page. Let'due south encounter... where'd they put [characteristic]? Is information technology in the topbar? Nope. Sidebar? Not that I tin see. Yous know it would fit pretty well in that empty spot. Why is it empty over there? I bet the designer likes Apple tree products. How is anyone supposed to know y'all tin can swipe downwards to get a menu? Honestly, I don't sympathize why they don't just utilize the space on the page instead of hiding everything.

In other discussion the designer hears "wasted whitespace" when the user is trying to say "wasted whitespace". I assure y'all: users don't intendance 1 way or some other virtually whitespace if the site just works. Information technology's entirely possible to fix excess whitespace by adding more whitespace if information technology highlights a feature that users take overlooked.[citation needed]

Instance study: UC Irvine

Graph of traffic on the UC Irvine forum this year and last

This is pageviews we've seen in the UC Irvine section of our forums according to Google Analytics. The spikes pretty much align with the influx of admission decisions from the schoolhouse. In fact, we get a fair amount of of traffic from Google via searches such as "uc irvine conclusion"5 where we are the fourth event. The 2020 spike is smaller than the 2019 fasten. But what'due south more troubling is the 2020 spike is pretty much all the traffic we are getting. If I had to approximate, it seems similar people aren't looking at other threads in the UCI topic. The analytics carry that out:

Google Analytics of UCI pages

And so yous can see plenty of traffic in the form of 2024 give-and-take (which patently didn't exist in 2019). Merely the traffic to the UCI topic page disappeared. Over again, there's a UI reason for this:

UC Irvine thread showing navigation points to the topic

It'south relatively piece of cake to find the topic the discussion is in and the hierarchy of the site. Maybe not as skilful as it could be, merely it's usable. Compare that to today's view:

UCI thread showing only one navigation point now

This is perhaps giving the new UI too much credit. The site is on the busy side and I didn't notice the navigation the first few times I used the forums. On the other paw, the four orange banners are a temporary mensurate to help people find the schools that are releasing decisions right now. Later on the navigation will be closer to the postal service unless you have the video advert loaded:

Ads now obscure navigation even more for unregistered users

Information technology's possible I'chiliad missing something, just that picayune set of links is the only way to browse to more UCI discussions. Also, for some reason, the current navigation excludes the "C" level where, for some reason, UCI is located. I clicked on the "Alphabetic List of Colleges" expecting Irvine to exist under I or, failing that, U. C for California is probably the right place, but the new UI no longer gives that hint.

What tin can nosotros practise virtually this?

As much as I'm tempted to revert to the previous theme, that'south not an option we have. In addition to the technical problems, this would be a signal to our users that we're not working toward solving their underlying bug. As one of my all-time favorite articles says:

Truthful innovation will rarely come from what users say directly.

Yes the new theme isn't working, but information technology tin can exist made to piece of work. We need to listen to what they are saying and dig deeper. Then we demand to prepare one problem after another until we have something that works.

Footnotes:

  1. Annoyingly, we can only see a twelvemonth at a fourth dimension. Whatever, Vanilla. ↩

  2. Really, we adopt to call it "maturing". ;-) ↩

  3. I believe this refers to the new registration organization. And they are not incorrect exactly. Nosotros take plans to use this data for good, but users don't see that yet. ↩

  4. Really? That's the acronym you desire to go with? ↩

  5. Apply the incognito mode (or equivalent) in your browser to avert having Google serve up pages you lot visit frequently. Hopefully that includes CC. ↩