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Thursday Mar 29, 2007
Homepage horror
There’s an increasing amount of consensus about web design these days, but the launch of the new-look Wired.com suggests that getting the homepage right is as difficult as ever.
The looks and feel of most sites is largely determined by the needs of accessibility and usability. There are lots of things that can be tweaked, but essentially there has to be a clear text area and straightforward navigation.
The homepage is the one place that sits outside of these conventions. It is the most important part of the site and the page that everyone in the organisation will have an opinion about and a stake in.
The particular challenge for Wired is the organisation of a huge amount of diverse content and, in my opinion, they’ve not done a very good job.
First impressions, which count for a lot online, are that it just feels wrong. There are big photos, shout-y headlines and a page that doesn’t fit on my lap-top screen. The navigation runs across the middle and, for those who’ve not been to the site before, there’s no explanation of what the site is about.
Trying to make sense of the categories is also difficult. What is the distinction between ‘Culture’, ‘Entertainment’ and ‘Gaming’? While the long list of blog posts at the bottom of the page threatens to be overwhelming.
The editor has defended the redesign but I’m not convinced. His case for the headline sizes is particularly weak.
*Why are the new top headlines so big? Because we believe design is a direct reflection of editorial point of view. Big headlines give us the chance, rarely used online, to change emphasis dramatically in real time, based on the events of the day. When big news hits, we'll play it big, so you'll be in no doubt about what we think is really important.*
Other news sites seem to manage to change emphasis without taking up two-thirds of my screen width with big black letters.
I reckon BBC News still sets the standard for news sites. Very clear, very easy to use and packed with both content and innovative tools. The one problem is finding anything on it that is more than a couple of days old – the search is rubbish.
Wired looks to me like a site designed by print people rather than web people. Maybe I should go back to reading the magazine.
Posted by Tom Green ( 10:58 AM ) Link to this post Comments[1]
Posted by Helen on April 02, 2007 at 12:24 PM GMT+00:00 #