It’s far too easy to decide to change things because we’ve got bored with them. Even if our customers are still fine and would actually prefer that we didn’t mess with something they’re used to.

This might be a bit of a rant at first but it’s relevant to your internet marketing, I promise!

I’ve just been forced to upgrade Firefox (the browser I’ve used for a number of years). At the time of writing it’s now on version 29. Still behind Chrome (version 35) but well ahead of Internet Explorer which is “only” on version 11. Mainly because Microsoft still believe that incremental updates in their software are just that – increments that don’t deserve a new version number.

As part of the upgrade, Firefox have changed the browser interface.

Why?

As far as I can work out the real reason is “because they can”.

So I’ve undergone about 5 minutes of research to find a plugin that puts the old interface back and then another 10 minutes tweaking my settings so that my mouse isn’t instinctively heading for a button or a menu item that no longer exists.

Personally, I’d have preferred it if they’d spent some time sorting out the memory leak problem that’s been around since at least 2006 and which they’ve been in denial about for at least as long.

Microsoft haven’t done that kind of change with their browser, they recently picked on their operating system instead and Windows 8 has helped accelerate the fall in the number of computers being bought.

This thought process applies to our internet marketing.

Because we’re close to something, we get bored and think it needs fixing. Whether or not that’s actually the case.

In theory, the only signals we should use to decide whether or not something needs changing are our sales and our profitability.

That means if your squeeze page is still getting – say – 50% optins and has been doing so for a number of years, the only thing you should be doing is playing what direct mail calls “beat the control”.

So whatever the current thing is that you’re measuring – and unless you do some really scary multivariate testing (which requires decent levels of traffic and someone who’s taken their math understanding to some quite high levels) should be just one thing at once – you need to run an A/B test to see whether the current option is still good or whether a tweak somewhere else beats it in a way that isn’t just down to chance.

If you’re getting a hundred people to your signup page a day, that will likely mean it will take a few days to get enough numbers to decide.

The same goes with any other aspect of your internet marketing.

Most of the time, you need to work with cold, hard figures.

There are times when gut instinct comes into play but most of the time it’s much better to let the numbers lead you.

Otherwise you are likely to fall into the same syndrome as Firefox or Microsoft – changing things that seemed to be worth changing without wondering whether or not how they would affect your customers until it was too late.

A simple button on Firefox asking whether or not I’d like to take a tour of their shiny new features or stay stuck in my ways (because I don’t want to learn how to use a browser again) would have been sufficient.

The same goes for Microsoft – an option like the one they’ve used for the last decade or more to keep the “classic” interface would have stopped the negative reaction of people who didn’t want to use a desktop or laptop computer – complete with keyboard and mouse or trackpad – in the same way as they use their mobile phone.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t experiment with your internet marketing.

Some of the best ideas ever invented have happened that way.

But it does mean that you shouldn’t change just because you’re bored.

Because changing things just because they can be changed often just bugs your current customers and if you change things too much they have every incentive to search around for an alternative solution.

If you’d like help with your internet marketing, take a look here.

And if you’ve got any comments you’d like to add, feel free to use the box below.