As many past marketers, entrepreneurs and CEO's have come to realize, making your product or service an indispensable part of the consumer's life is the best way to continually make money from whatever it is you do. This is evidenced in countless companies, through their products or services which the public begins to associate with their name (like when people want a tissue and inevitably ask for a Kleenex), and furthermore how their constituency reacts when they make changes in their brand, their product or their service.
Take for example the automobile as an old time example. Ford with the Model T car was the original auto company; they made a product that was relatively inexpensive to the growing American public at the turn of the century, and soon the entire country was driving. Although other companies were able to start up and compete, Ford is still kicking strong with new developments like a car that runs on hybrid diesel fuel and will only be sold in Europe, and still making money, because their name is still associated with this indispensable form of modern life (transportation).
Take for example the automobile as an old time example. Ford with the Model T car was the original auto company; they made a product that was relatively inexpensive to the growing American public at the turn of the century, and soon the entire country was driving. Although other companies were able to start up and compete, Ford is still kicking strong with new developments like a car that runs on hybrid diesel fuel and will only be sold in Europe, and still making money, because their name is still associated with this indispensable form of modern life (transportation).
To look at an industry and time period much closer to where I work, let's look at the new design of Facebook, the social networking site started by Mark Zuckerberg in Palo Alto, California just 4 1/2 years ago. Facebook has quickly grown its membership, which currently sits somewhere around 100 million. When you are dealing with such a large market, your consumers are obviously going to come from a wide cross section. This is very important when making a decision in how to operate your company.
Because Facebook is so large and was also experiencing a relative difficulty in maintaining a profitable web presence, they brought in help to their marketing team. Since then, the company has launched a new design and layout for their page as well as several plans for commercialization of their already popular web applications. By creating a new set of rules for the companies who could create applications, and by selling different types of ads directly on the site, Facebook has been working diligently on becoming a serious economic player.
Since we are a professional web design and development team at Stormfront, we have been particularly interested in the new design, and also how it has been received by the new users. With roughly 40 million people having tried the new design and 30 million not going back to the old one (which as of now the user can toggle between the two), it seems that Facebook has worked in a good amount of usability. Starting next week, the old design will no longer be available, and the real test begins.
Facebook dominates the social networking landscape, and as they've seen with the introduction of previous applications, a little change can be devastating to their patrons. Keeping this in mind, they allowed for the slow transition to the new layout which should definitely help ward off some of the negative feelings. In effect, I'm pretty sure that Facebook won't go under for changing their site short of trashing their site with intrusive ads and other such changes that destroy the functionality. They have successfully become part of the vocabulary of 100,000 million people and they're still growing. If you don't believe it just "Facebook me" and we can chat about it.
Because Facebook is so large and was also experiencing a relative difficulty in maintaining a profitable web presence, they brought in help to their marketing team. Since then, the company has launched a new design and layout for their page as well as several plans for commercialization of their already popular web applications. By creating a new set of rules for the companies who could create applications, and by selling different types of ads directly on the site, Facebook has been working diligently on becoming a serious economic player.
Since we are a professional web design and development team at Stormfront, we have been particularly interested in the new design, and also how it has been received by the new users. With roughly 40 million people having tried the new design and 30 million not going back to the old one (which as of now the user can toggle between the two), it seems that Facebook has worked in a good amount of usability. Starting next week, the old design will no longer be available, and the real test begins.
Facebook dominates the social networking landscape, and as they've seen with the introduction of previous applications, a little change can be devastating to their patrons. Keeping this in mind, they allowed for the slow transition to the new layout which should definitely help ward off some of the negative feelings. In effect, I'm pretty sure that Facebook won't go under for changing their site short of trashing their site with intrusive ads and other such changes that destroy the functionality. They have successfully become part of the vocabulary of 100,000 million people and they're still growing. If you don't believe it just "Facebook me" and we can chat about it.