“Invisible change” in your favorite web sites

My colleague Bill Skeet published an interesting blog a few weeks ago about “Invisible Change” — the improvement and innovation that happens quietly in digital experiences such as web sites and mobile apps. You may have noticed — or not noticed — this phenomenon on web sites you visit frequently. For instance, you may have noticed the shopping site Amazon.com updated its web design very recently, and that the new design feels newer and fresher but still retains all of the key functions that you’re familiar with as an Amazon customer. But, if you think back, you’ll realize Amazon.com has been continually changing for years, in thousands and thousands of microsteps.

Cisco.com isn’t Amazon.com, but we also practice this continuual improvement regimen. In his post, Bill lists a number of improvements on Cisco.com that have happened quietly in the last year or so. These range from improved site search, to product search boxes in the support and downloads area, to 7,000 product model pages for support that were added to Cisco.com streamlined tools, and tweaked link labels and terminology to be more understandable. There have also been some significant updates in our online commerce areas for customers and partners.

Because improvements are rolled out incrementally, we have often found that even regular Cisco.com visitors had no idea about all of these changes. But, they were absolutely delighted as they interacted with some of the new features.

If you have a little time over this holiday-laden period of the next few weeks, feel free to spend some time interacting with Cisco.com, and I’ll bet you find at least a half-dozen things you didn’t notice before.

Enjoy!

P.S. If you’re interested in how we drive continual improvements in our web and mobile experiences, one excellent process that we have developed at Cisco is something called our 5-Star Experience program. I’ll be writing about this in the near future, but here’s a sneak preview encapsulated into one graphic: