A surprising metric
It makes sense that Markos Moulitsas, as the founder and CEO of Daily Kos, is privy to all sorts of site metrics, some of which longtime Daily Kos Community members might find rather surprising. This was certainly the case the other day when, in a comment thread about Daily Kos’s upcoming transition to the WordPress platform, Markos mentioned a metric about the old front page design:
I know some folks prefer the old version, but it’s used by only about 100 people out of our entire readership. We simply can’t justify maintaining two separate front pages indefinitely, so that older format won’t be carried forward. I understand that may be disappointing, but it’s important for us to focus our limited resources on improvements that serve the broader community.
Several people replied to that comment saying that they were among the 100. I didn’t reply to the comment, but I use the old version as well, and, like some of those commenters, was quite surprised to hear this metric.
I don’t doubt Markos’s honesty, though I wonder if there could be a flaw in the analytics that he’s looking at. In a poll I ran after the new design was introduced, out of 1255 respondents 86% favored the old version. But strong initial resistance to a design change is to be expected, and 5 years have passed, so it may very well be that almost everyone now has switched to the new version.
In any event, it doesn’t hurt to run a poll again. Even an unscientific poll like this can provide a gut check on the analytics.
▶ Keep in mind this poll is asking about which front page you use, not which you prefer — though I suspect they are highly correlated!
▶ Since the old front page isn’t used on smart phones, the question of old vs. new front page doesn’t apply to phones. But device usage is an important metric, therefore the poll asks about both front page and device usage.
UPDATE:
Some commenters have pointed out that my second bullet point above is wrong. Sorry, I didn’t realize the option “Switch to old front page” was available on smart phones, but now I see it is. I know the old page was designed for desktop so it’s not particularly mobile-friendly, but it’s helpful to know that some users don’t mind using it on mobile. Thanks!
UPDATE 2:
At the tail end of the comment thread, brillig has relayed a message from Markos acknowledging that the “about 100” metric was a mistake:
Hey all, very late to the party here for a followup comment, and I’ll be mentioning it in tonight’s Top Comments. As some of you may know, I’m a member of the dkos Community Advisory Panel, and I brought this diary up in our group chat as information we all needed to see. Markos asked us to share this from him:
So I double checked and glad I did, because I was wrong, and didn’t capture the full number of people who use it (I think i was looking at concurrent). The total number of uses on the old layout is 3,000. I’m traveling and can’t post a correction and update, but if you guys want to deliver that message I’d appreciate it.
