What's wrong with our website?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3772247

by one2many • 14 years ago

15 16 14 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I work on the digital advertising side of the newspaper, and don't know much about coding, but I get the feeling we could do more to improve the structure, design and user experience.

If you could change one thing with pe.com, what would it be?

neilk• 14 years ago

I don't see how anyone can answer this without knowing how your customers and audience use the site. I could critique the fonts and such, but sometimes sites with downright ugly design are very useful to their user base, like Craigslist.

If you are asking such a general question I suspect you might not be doing enough measurement.

You can try Google Page Speed for some optimization suggestions but you're not doing badly, except for serving unscaled images (ouch). I'd fix that at least. https://developers.google.com/pagespeed/#url=www.pe.com&...

one2many2• 14 years ago

We are doing tons of measurement. We use Google Analytics, Omniture, and Parse.ly. We are literally drowning in data.

I have only been in the industry a few years, but most newspaper websites that I come across do the same thing. We product 80-100 new pieces of content per day and it is very challenging to create a design that works.

About our Audience: Our audience is the 5 million residents in the Riverside, CA area. As we are right next to Los Angeles, we do not have dedicated local TV news. There are 13 other newspapers in our market, including the LA Times.

About 30% of our audience accounts for 80% of our uniques & page views. Traffic picks up around 9 and peaks around lunch.

We have seen one trend: Homepage -> article -> homepage -> article etc for the 'top stories'

sebphfx• 14 years ago

I would put the columnists and bloggers section on the right side, under the search widget. It looks empty a bit. That's just my opinion. Reilk is absolutely right though.

davidm• 14 years ago

Remove the top banner so that the masthead /register / sign-in is the first thing you see.

You should get better brand recognition and more registrations/logins.

Abban• 14 years ago

I would widen the article area by moving the smaller sidebar or advert panel down the page. Feels like you're trying to get too much content above the fold.

yurivictor• 14 years ago

Some quick thoughts:

• Ads are eroding the experience. Focus on high impact inventory with fewer competing ads and alternatives to display. The goal is higher revenue and a better experience.

• Need to design beyond news. Give users indispensable tools for their daily routine and provide context beyond the news cycle.

• The site lacks a voice. You live in your community. Your site should look and sound local.

• Local news seems to be your core asset. Provide a local filter on everything. Allow passive and active customization for better relevance.

• The navigation and taxonomy are confusing. By housing everything, you showcase nothing. Decrease top navigation by increasing in-page navigation.

hcarvalhoalves• 14 years ago

Just because the site is not "fresh" doesn't mean it's bad. I found it quite usable. Things you can do better at:

1. Give more "room" for the content to breath, this improves legibility, specially at the home page where the reader is more likely to skim the content. Move unrelated content further away.

2. Follow a grid, and have all content block following the same margins. Most are uneven and that makes it hard to understand which things are related, and which aren't.

3. Improve typography. Use consistent styles for all your titles and body text. Assign consistent sizes and line-spacing.

epc2• 14 years ago

I'd eliminate any scripts you're not actively using and generally focus on reducing the size of the pages.

The home page "feels" very heavy — it takes a long time to load, and inspecting it via Google Chrome Developer tools there's several scripts which fail to load entirely. I'd challenge whether you absolutely need TinyMCE for example on your homepage, and any of the associated scripts.

A lot of the yahoo yieldmanager javascript (if it's needed at all) should be pushed into a separate cacheable file.

There's a mix of relative URLs and complete URLs, I'd strip out the repeated http://www.pe.com/ as much as possible.

one2many2• 14 years ago

How skilled a developer would we need to handle these issues?

epc2• 14 years ago

I honestly don't know. Someone with experience using the developer tools within Firefox or Chrome or Safari to review the code and see what you're really using vs. what's been thrown in with the kitchen sink.

dwynings• 14 years ago

If you're considering a redesign, I'd highly suggest http://www.informationarchitects.jp/en/projects/

reason• 14 years ago

Writing this on my iPad, so apologies for being terse.

1. Top half is really busy. Ads above and below header image are way too distracting, so the name of the site isn't immediately evident.

2. Ad right above navigation bar is confusing and makes me think the nav bar is part of it.

3. Titles and images aren't arranged right. I thought the title to the article of the main image was the one to the right.

4. Trim down on those lists of breaking and local news stories and bring some of the other categorical content up. Sports/photos/videos/etc are way down below.

5. The 3 column structure is too cluttered. Either give it more white space, or cut it down to 2 with the sidebar composed of mini-sections. Right now the main story does not stand out.

6. Reduce overall number of stories on each page. My eyes are darting all over.

7. Ajax, gradients, rounded corners, openid, CSS4, node.js.

RollAHardSix• 14 years ago

One thing: Minimalist your home-page. Your header looks very crowded.

I did like the cleanliness of your general homepage layout however. I found it very easy to rest my eyes on your major news stories almost flowing 'naturally'.

dbrosius• 14 years ago

it takes too long to load

village88• 14 years ago

I would simplify what you have on the website. There are way too many distractions. Remove the distractions, organize the site so that you only put what the users want to see on the page.

fourmii• 14 years ago

It's really cluttered. I find the Register, Sign in, Member Center, Subscriber Center area way too busy. Maybe you coul simplify the register/sign-in box?

What's wrong with our website?

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