How best to guide your users when you move a critical feature?

Question

The users of my site start a single user journey via an entry point on the home page. We have trained them to do this, but since it is not the universal pattern and has monetary implications, we want to move away from it.

I am worried that by removing the current entry point that users will think that this service is no longer available and drop-off. Some education is needed and was hoping that someone can provide some research or data on what works best.

I feel that global messages and modals can be closed so easily and that people would have message blindness.

Answer 1

When your new position for the entry point is better than the old one you could place both entry points on the website first and monitor if the new entry point gets the major attention over time. When enough users use the new entry point remove the old one. To be save you could think about a visual command to have it in hold if you watch the conversion rate drops.

Another way could be to just replace the entry point with the new one but make the new one visually an eye-catcher. Over time you could reduce the visual design of the entry point to a normal state.