While I normally direct the focus of my posts on specific marketing tools, I've decided to change this week's focus up a bit to share one of my own recent experiences to help showcase the importance of testing and re-testing drastic changes to your site.

A few weeks back, a former editor with whom I still keep in contact sent me an email letting me know that the newspaper for which I used to work had recently implemented a new digital format. The newspaper had previously offered free access to the daily news online, but adminstrators decided that the practice was leading to lost revenue for the newspaper. That was well over a year ago, and now the newspaper has brought out a new, improved, and paid online subscription that costs less than a subscription to the print edition, and is included for those with a print subscription.

Fair enough.

At any rate, my former editor was letting me know that the paper was offering a 10-day free trial of the new service if I wanted to check it out. I figured it would be nice to see what was happening in my old stompin' grounds, as well as to read and view the work of my old co-workers and friends.

After signing up, I eagerly signed in, and at first was pretty impressed. The first thing I saw when I logged in was an actual image of the front page of that day's issue, complete with clickable articles and pictures. Click on an article, and a pop-up box would appear with the text of the article. My instant reaction was one of excitement, as I figured $24 for three months of this would be a great deal since I live hundreds of miles from the town.

Once I started clicking through the software that hosts the service for the newspaper, I became less thrilled.

I spend enough time in both my professional and personal life online that I like to think I probably have an above-average understanding of how things online work. That's why when I struggled to find the sections I was looking for, I was a little surprised. I simply couldn't figure this service out, and it took me about 10 minutes to locate one section of the newspaper. I was annoyed, but figured maybe it was just a little bug in the system.

A few days later, I was talking to my family who still lives in the area, and they asked me to look something up from the previous week's issue. Figuring it would be a great way to explore the archives, I started my search. Frankly, the search didn't work. The sidebars didn't work. While I did eventually find the article that I was seeking, it ended up being an enormous task to undertake.

The average age in this particular demographic area where the newspaper is published is well above the national average. If I was struggling this much to find information using the new Website, how were the older adults fairing?

I called yesterday to cancel my subscription - not because the information and content was great (it was very nice to read the pages of my old newspaper), but because I simply hated trying to use the interface. It seemed like a very, very awesome service upon first glance, but when trying to use it, it simply became too much of a challenge. (Unfortunately, I cancelled my subscription before I caught the name of the company providing the software to host the service!).

The point? Be sure that even your most exciting and innovative ideas that look fantastic on paper are actually viable, user-friendly options for your Website. Test your idea, test it again, wait awhile, and test it again. Get feedback from a small group before you completely overhaul your site.

Even if you do everything right to drive your traffic and increasing your rankings, and even if your content is among the best there is, the site still has to be user-friendly. And unless your site caters to a very specific market, it needs to be user-friendly for Internet novices as well as for the more tech-savvy.