Interesting statistic from a Jupiter report on customization:
The Wall Street Journal Online spent $28 million on a site redesign in 2002. Much of the expense was associated with offering users customization features, including a dynamically generated front page. Yet, earlier, Schwab discontinued its customizable offering, MySchwab.
Although people who customize sites are active and loyal users with a proclivity for cross-media programming, it isn’t worth it for most sites to offer rich customization. Fewer than 20 percent of most sites’ audience will customize, and only five percent will increase usage frequency because of it.
The interesting thing is that I let my WSJ.com online subscription lapse shortly after the launch of the new features… I actually liked the personable settings that WSJ.com added, but felt that my $$$ could be spent better elsewhere (I really had to buy Metal of Honor: Frontline for my PS2) so I let the sub. lapse. I know, sad story, but its true.
I find it interesting however that only 20% of ‘most sites’ audience will customize. I wonder why that is? I know a lot of people sign up for one service like “My Yahoo” or their ISP’s start page and have stuck with it over the years, and probably feel that they don’t have the time to learn a new system, or perhaps its because the stock set up that some sites offers, is already good enough.
I wonder what sites like Kuro5hin or Slashdot see in terms of % of customization… that might be an interesting correlation.
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