It appears that a real disconnect has developed between Ancestry and its core customers over the last several years. Contrast the nature and implementation of changes made to the family tree layout back in 2009 with the current experience:
June 4, 2009 : Today we launched in a “preview” mode several enhancements (with more coming soon) designed to make your family tree experience faster and easier. These changes will remain in preview for the next several weeks before they become permanent. The family tree pages will load faster and we’ve introduced some key navigation improvements to help you find what you’re looking for quickly and navigate your tree with fewer clicks.
HOW TO ACCESS THE PREVIEW
To access the preview, navigate to any person in your family tree and select the link at the top of the person page “Check out the new look of family trees and give us your feedback.”
HOW TO EXIT THE PREVIEW
To return to the current family tree look, click the “exit the family tree preview” link at the top of any page in the preview. Also in this same area you’ll find links to learn more about the changes, and a tool to send us your thoughts on the updates (which we welcome!).
Ancestor Profile Page
We’ve changed the look and navigation of the profile page to make it easier to use and to help you keep your information organized. Tabs across the top of the page make it easier to access sources, photos, stories, comments, hints and more. General information about the person you are viewing will remain consistent at the top of the page making is easier to always know exactly where you are.
Show me the sources
The new “Facts & Sources” tab makes it easy to see what facts and events a person has, and what evidence supports those facts.
Family is always a click away
We’ve made the “Show immediate family” link available on most pages so you can always put the person you’re viewing in context of his or her immediate family members.
Photos, front and center
You spoke up, we listened. You let us know that you prefer photos above the timeline. That’s where they are now — back on top. In addition to showing photos, the media gallery shows all of the media items you’ve added.
Built for speed
We’ve completely rebuilt many pages from the ground up. It’s faster than ever to load and navigate around your tree. So this is more than simply a new color & layout change—moving to this new design helped us achieve substantial improvements in performance. The new design has major technical improvements (requiring 65% fewer object requests, and 90% fewer server requests), so your pages will load faster than ever. In addition we’re loading the most important parts of pages first, so you can get on with your research sooner.
NEW NAVIGATION SHORTCUTS
The new tree navigation is designed to make it both easier and faster to access key tools for your family tree...In addition, the new tree navigation has persistent links to the home person, the list of all people, and a quick search box which lets you type in a name to quickly navigate to a person.
What’s a “preview”?
A “Preview” enables members to see upcoming enhancements in their own family trees with their own family data. Many members appreciate (and have requested) a chance to learn more about and comment on significant changes before they are finalized. The preview model provides an opportunity to do that.
Why are you making these changes?
We’ve approached these changes with a great deal of caution—why mess up a good thing? We have two key reasons for these changes—first we’ve studied how members use the family tree product and found several areas where the current design hampers navigation and requires too many clicks.The new navigation model will make it easier to move to different people in your tree, with fewer clicks, and easier to review the information and sources you have for each person. To minimize the amount of change, we’ve done our best to add these key navigation improvements in the most low-impact way possible.
The second key reason for the change is to improve site performance. The ancestor profile page has become the single-most viewed page on Ancestry.com. Improving its performance will minimize wait times so you can focus on getting your research done.
How do you know this is better?
Our confidence comes primarily from working with members and watching how they do their family history work. We visit members in their homes to observe how they work, we invite members to our office to see our new design ideas and try them out, and we get a lot of suggestions online and by email. We’re launching this as a ‘preview’ to make sure everybody gets a chance to see what we’re changing and give feedback. The feedback tool sends each message straight to the team responsible for these changes to the tree system. We will be reading and considering each feedback item we receive. If you find things that don’t work as well for you as you’d like, please let us know.
http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2009/06/04/family-tree-pr...July 2, 2009: A new look for Ancestry Member Trees is now live on Ancestry.com. We’ve updated the design and navigation to help you find what you’re looking for quickly and rebuilt the pages so they load faster. In early June, we launched a preview of these enhancements to the family tree. Our goal was to help you become familiar with the changes before they were incorporated on the site, as well as give us your opinion of the new design. We received over 8,000 responses, the large majority of them very much excited to see the preview features implemented. We are very grateful for the time and care you put in to providing such insightful feedback, and made several changes to the preview as a direct result of your feedback.
Since the new look launched (yesterday morning) we have received nearly 4,000 feedback responses. We’re taking notes and making plans for additional improvements as people get used to the new look and we learn better how to optimize it. We encourage you to continue sending us your feedback through the feedback link in your family tree.
http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2009/07/02/new-family-tre...Fast forward - June 1, 2015
We are excited to announce that the new Ancestry website is now available to all U.S.-based members*. As some of you know, the new site has been in beta since mid-February, and thousands of Ancestry members have been actively using the new site and providing feedback (thank you!). As of today, the new Ancestry site is available to the broader Ancestry member community.
The new Ancestry site has been designed to transform how you can discover and tell your family story. One of the greatest unmet needs of our members has been the desire for story. We all like to listen to and share stories, but it can sometimes be hard to unravel and tell the stories behind all the facts and information you have gathered in your tree. With new storytelling features and a streamlined design, the new Ancestry helps you weave together richer stories that can bring you closer to knowing your ancestors as people.
It’s your family story, reinvented.
To get the big picture of the new Ancestry, see this quick video. For a detailed FAQ on the new site and what’s included, click here. To try the new site now, click here.
We hope you enjoy the new Ancestry – and experience a whole new way to bring your ancestors’ stories to life. * We rolled the new website out to U.S.-based customers to start and expect the rest of the world to experience it in the next couple of months.
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