Yesterday, SeattlePI.com decided to move away from a "dayparting" strategy. What's dayparting, you ask? (I did)

Four times every weekday, the look, feel, content and functionality of our home page changed dramatically.

Dayparting is based on a theory that people use the web differently at different times during the day. The PI is moving away from it, however, because:

We can't be all things to all people all the time. People might want to play games or shop or read celebrity gossip, but they weren't coming to our site for that.

In the quest for growth, too many companies look for new customers while alienating their current ones. It's one (non-sensical) reason why mobile companies offer discounts only to new customers, and let current ones pay regular prices until they leave for a competitor's new-customers-only offer.

By experimenting with dayparting, the folks at SeattlePI have learned that sometimes it's better to focus on growing deeper engagement with current customers rather than attempting to be all things to all people. It's the media version of 37 Signals' "make half a product, not a half-assed product".

Parenthetically, this also says volumes about the PI to experiment, fail publically, and be transparent about its decision. Especially in corporate America, people are too often looked down on for failure; I've found that there's no better opportunity to learn than by falling on my face and figuring out why. (via Paidcontent)

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