The bottom line is the “new” Site failed miserably and we, hopefully, learned a lot. We realized that as cool as some of the new features were, many of them didn’t interest our customers and just took up space and/or confused some people. Most importantly, we heard from many of our customers during the three months we were “testing” the new site and when we decided to pull the plug, we felt we knew more about what our customers wanted.

Our intentions were pure but our methodology was flawed. Still, a lesson learned the hard way is a lesson well-taught and well-remembered.

We are, once again, in the midst of change. Spurred on by growing pains and outdated software, we have some necessary changes to make and we are trying to keep in mind what we heard and learned last year. We have a team developing a new platform for our Site that will make some changes that cannot be avoided any longer. We will try to make the process as simple and painless as possible. We are using the feedback we received last year from our customers to guide us through. We have already done some testing and we are about to invite nearly 10,000 of our e-mail subscribers to test the functionality and friendliness for us.