Greg Sterling makes an interesting suggestion today over at Screenwerk. When it comes time to introduce your next site design, let your users make the decision. What sparked this idea? Well, AOL just introduced their new site design and apparently, the reception hasn't been all wine and roses.

Greg points out that the design has been criticized for being too much like Yahoo!'s.

Take a look for yourself and see what you think...

Umm...yeah.

Assuming there were a range of options that circulated internally, here's what AOL probably should've done: put the top 2-5 designs up on the site and have users vote and provide feedback on them. This approach would've gotten some good PR about the involvement of users in the product redesign. The company might have even built some sort of "contest" or similar event around it.

I wonder, what would have happened if AOL had followed Greg's advice and allowed their readers to pick the design that they like best.

I see a few possibilities...

1.) The readers overwhelmingly vote for one design, AOL uses it and everyone is happy.

2.) The readers overwhelmingly vote for one design, AOL uses it and then realizes that it looks exactly like Yahoo!'s design. (Perhaps AOL users also use Yahoo and want something familiar?)

3.) The readers vote for one design by a slight margin, AOL integrates it and all the people that voted for other designs get mad. A blogstorm of criticism follows.

4.) The readers split themselves almost evenly between two or three designs leaving AOL to make the choice themselves while trying to figure out how to head off a blogstorm of criticism.

As far as I see it, they had a 50/50 chance of winning or ticking people off no matter what they did.

That's not to say there isn't value in allowing your customers to have feedback in the way you run your business. After all, businesses spend tons of time trying to figure out exactly what their customers want so they can deliver it.