May I make a few suggestions for you to consider before you make changes to the website?

I am the mother of a son who has Obsesive Compulsive Disorder and thought I would offer some of the tricks I've learned over the years to allow my son to be able to handle the changes we've had to make in our lives. This might help stem some of the complaints that seem to run rabid in the forums everytime a change is made.

1. Warn people that a change is coming. Make an anouncement on the front page or in the forums. Then it won't come as a suprise.

2. Give the community a chance to give input before the chances are made. They don't have to dictate the whole site, just a few minor changes like this color or that, or a choice of 3 fonts, or perhaps a choice of 2 or 3 slightly veried layouts.

3. Post a screen shot or 2 of what the final look will be so if all the changes can't be made at once so people are less likely to get concerned over the middle steps.

4. when possible make make small changes over a period of time rather than the whole site at once so the change doesn't seem as drastic.

I know this won't stop all complaints. You can't please everyone. But it might help cut back on them.

Excellent suggestions!

Or instead of tying changes to suggestions, tie to to actual metric data.  

When you change a font, do sales go up?  Do they go down? Does it stay the same?

Do people leave the checkout flow at a certain point they didn't before?

If you do A/B test comparison, only a segment of the userbase even sees different content.  It keeps problems fairly well contained and you make good business choices based off user feedback and sale data.

I do however agree with the above.  A major release which revamps the majority of the site needs a lot of development and QA testing in a cross browser format.   Every time your site goes down (or becomes unusable) you make no money.  None, for the entire duration of the outage.  You want to avoid that at all costs. That's why you test a lot before (and after) deployment.

Thank you for your suggestions. I'll add this to my list.

KimberlyC?
On your todo list?

• Ask for a refund.

The site is way beyond the point of human tolerance.

You see?
I keep my lines short.
I have to.
Otherwise
i can not
read half
of what
i write
any more.

Unbelievable
What has
happened
to our
beloved forum.

Fire that guy
FAST

Before all
is lost.

Eek.. Thanks for bringing that up. What version of IE is that? Does that happen on all pages? On every browser for you?

A screengrab of THIS page WITH your post.

I asked you because the programers will most likely have me ask you if I don't now. That way they can pin point the problem.

As most end users, this is Windows XP, 32bit with Windows IE 8, up to date, including all automatic Windows updates.

Windows 7 looks a bit better, but the pages jump in with, go off screen, half is unreadable or hidden beghind those gray add blocks.

Thank you.. I will add this to my email along with your images.  :)

The forum gang as I call them are all Hi end PC users.
Have Windows7 or Windows 8 With I9 or IE10.

But?

"We" the forum gang, are NOT representative of the worlds PC users.

50% out there is on Windows XP with IE8.

When checking something new???
Do so with the equipment your end user client has.

Not what the webmaster has.

They are good in Powerpoint presentations, but completely forget their end user clients.

Who do we serve?

Ourselves? Or our clients?

Every where I look here on the site, somebody is complaining about the changes.
Forum
Freestuff
Marketplace
Windows jumping aroud at random.

This is  fully up to date XP machine. DO NOT PLAY with other browsers.

Always build for, and work with, the standard.
And the standard for Windows is IE.