I don't see the answer I want: "Why are you expending so much time and energy on a detail which is not really relevant to your core mission?"

Sure, if the background was absurdly garish or flashing skulls or something I could see that causing problems, warranting polls and forum discussions and so on. But really, all this drama over two different shades of blue?

James

I think it took 5min to change the color, 5min to do the poll, two times, so 20min...maybe more answering the forum threads...anyway, I don't really understand the color they chose, I would prefer darker, but not "bluer"...some say it's the details that matter ;-)

The Skritter team is pretty determined to make Skritter the best possible experience it can be. Anytime I have a complaint, suggestion, correction, etc. someone tends to email me within the hour with what has been changed/reasoning behind certain things/explanations/etc. Although for some people the background color may not matter, to others it can be a distraction. Once this was brought up, the Skritter team acted in a timely and efficient manner to determine if they needed to change the color back. I, for one, am happy they changed it back as I wasn't a fan of the darker blue and didn't like that it was hard to read the text at the bottom and top right of the page.

In my opinion Skritter as a whole works really well at the moment, and it's the little details that they need to pay attention to and that can really make or break the company. And so, I applaud them for the way they handled the whole background thing.

I don't know...

I might like a flaming skulls background. I often listen to heavy metal when I do Skritter. It would go with the theme well.

How about flashing red and black with animated skulls and dragons?

The dragons are too much. The flashing red and black is an interesting idea, but skulls and a flashing background are probably a bit much for when I want to Skritter to classical music.

Maybe they should just continue to give us a rather uninspired blue.

No no, it should detect what music you're listening to and adjust the background to match.

Combine an interest in start-up strategies, marketing and statistics, and you get to these A/B and multivariate tests. Changing a background colour and analysing its effect on conversion rates is simply 牛逼.

http://georgesaines.com/2010/09/28/how-we-increased-conversion-actions-218-and-increased-sales-0/

I personally love the new darker blue background.

@nick - the obvious solution here is to have a customizable background color. Or at least a menu with some choices like "light," "dark," and "chrome flaming skulls on an alternating red and black background." Definitely NOT a high priority or even slightly necessary, but it would be cool to see when you guys run out of other stuff to do.

Just change it... don't ask. Too much democracy.

Yeah, it doesn't take us very long to try changes like this. I don't want to add an option because as many point out, the background color should not be significant, so it doesn't warrant an option (each of which increases complexity in many ways).

I asked the second poll just for my own amusement, to see the asymmetry in the answers.

WoodenFrogs, I don't think we'll ever run out of other stuff to do. ;)

rashphoto, we did just change it, but there was too much backlash, so we quickly measured opinion and then changed it back. No problem.