New media users continued… Instinct for survival: E!

You can prototype a website until you're blue in the face, but sometimes you should trust your gut when determining what users want. That's something Will Marks, VP of business development at E! Entertainment Television, learned after going through a 'very expensive, very time-consuming, very detailed' redesign of E! Online a year-and-a-half ago. E! worked with a Web consulting shop to do user eyeball tracking and prototyping, but when the website relaunched, 'people didn't love the site,' says Marks. 'They didn't love the new front door, didn't love that the site was too slow to load, couldn't find their favorite columns...'