When the social media service, Digg, launched a new page redesign in Fall 2010, users were very disgruntled. Their displeasure was felt so much to the point that many of them left the service, causing Digg to experience financial difficulties in maintaining the site and attracting sponsors. Because of the user exodus, Digg had to layoff a number of employees, and the business continued to suffer.

However, Digg recently decided to do a major overhaul of its site again, but yet opted to approach the design in a different way. The company used its social media service in a truly social networking fashion by approaching the users to get their feedback and comments on what they thought should go into the company’s new design.

Digg is a socially engaging site, so therefore to place emphasis on the areas where users are more interested in interacting is where they are going to direct the upcoming changes. For instance:

• Key topics that draw high traffic are going to be placed at the top of the page. They had previously been along the sidebar, not as visible as they could have been. Some of the most engaging topics include science, gaming and technology.
• The search button is now displayed as a magnifying icon to make it more prominently displayed as well.
• The submit button to submit stories is also now at the top of every page to encourage this action. Since it is now prominently positioned, it keeps visitors from having to “hunt” for it each time they want to submit an article or news story.

With the user feedback, Digg hopes revamping the site and restructuring the look to make it more user-friendly and visually appealing will be significant enough to reclaim lost users and increase overall traffic.