Where's the innovation in site design?
Simplicity, horizontal navigation and more of an emphasis on breaking news seem to be key strategies of recently redesigned newspaper website home pages. All of these new designs are pleasing. The problem is that they mimic newspapers a bit too much, perhaps because some of them have little else besides breaking news to distinguish them from their print counterparts. I'd like to imagine the next generation of design. But first, a few examples of the recent new designs:
- Knoxnews.com, the website of the Knoxville News Sentinel, has a clean, simple home page design with a centerpiece photo display that rotates among several images. There's very little here, though, besides the newspaper's content.
- Another Scripps newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, gave its website an even simpler design, with a very large centerpiece photo display and just a few dynamic links. Again, there's not much here that's different from the newspaper.
- Registerguard.com, in Eugene, Ore., is attractive and easy to navigate. But there's hardly any web-original content, and the print content seems really old because the site isn't updated until noon Pacific time each day.
- Startribune.com, in Minneapolis, jettisoned vertical navigation, simplified the home page design and emphasizes breaking news. You still get lots of links to newspaper content, but they're toward the bottom of the home page.
Other big-city sites, such as latimes.com, nytimes.com and washingtonpost.com do a good job highlighting breaking news and a few web-original features, which make their sites much more dynamic than they appear at first glance -- nytimes.com in particular looks so much like a newspaper you wonder if the ink will smear if you touch your computer screen.
As my friend Dale Peskin tells it, most people think of newspapers as being like Walter Matthau -- the perfect image of a grumpy old man. Why, then, would anyone want to A) design their news website to look like a newspaper; and B) use the same format and even the exact same content as the newspaper? (Maybe nytimes.com can get away with it because its brand is so powerful.)
But what will the next generation of news sites look like? I'm not sure. While I like a few elements of each of the above designs, I don't know of any newspaper site design that's good. And that's a problem because our site, spokesmanreview.com, is way overdue for a redesign, and it would be a whole lot easier to steal someone else's design than to come up with our own.
Our web staff has argued at length this week over what role the "repurposed print content" should play in our redesign. One argument is that the "shovelware" is yesterday's news and because it's the only part of our site that requires a subscripton, it should be segregated into a "premium" sidebar spot. Another argument is that the print content is the best journalism that's being provided by our news staff, so it should have the most prominent display. A third argument is that, in the future, what now is "repurposed print content" actually will appear first on the web, and we need to design for a true, 24/7 news and information site.
We agree that simplicity is good, and there might be too much information to organize easily on a newspaper web site, particularly one such as ours that specializes in breaking news, blogs, multimedia, and other web-original content. So maybe the site needs to be broken down into "site-lets," or section fronts that act as home pages for different types of content or different subjects. That would free up the actual home page to be a very simple, very dynamic package that aggregates and promotes only the best, most current stuff.
We're still pretty early in the process, so I can't guarantee that our redesigned site will represent a fundamental change. But one thing's for sure -- we're not looking at news sites for inspiration. Anyone who wants to share their ideas or point out compelling designs should email me.
Comments
Some thoughts on this subject over here.
Posted by: Jay Small | November 11, 2005 01:35 PM
Jay, you've expressed very well what I've been wrestling with for a year. We're coming from a slightly different place, since our publisher decided to offer an online replica edition. It's perking along with 1-2% of print circ, which makes print folk happy in an era of declining print circ (counts for ABC), but I insisted on a robust free site (hence the choice you face when you go to the URL I listed), which carries just a handful of articles from the print edition. We definitely need section fronts, and everyone wants a cleaner home page (take away that left nav), but since "everyone" also wants their turf "above the fold" we're slowly drifting to multiple sites: one site for younger non-readers (www.theumag.com is the current, underwhelming iteration); another for tourists (in my head only right now); another for "the news." Promote each separately (lifetime work guarantee for our SEO provider), don't try to be all things to all people...
Posted by: Michael Odza | November 11, 2005 06:01 PM
very well said. i couldnt agree more
Posted by: Professional web design Specialist | November 16, 2005 05:07 AM
Valid comments on knoxnews.com. But here're a few new Web-only features on knoxnews.com.
Talking Forecast
http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/weather
Google Traffic Map
http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/traffic
Travel Booking Service
http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/travel
Posted by: Ed Tisdale | November 17, 2005 11:53 AM
Ken the newspaper industry needs more folks that question our current practices. You are absolutely correct, newspaper websites remind me a lot of printed newspapers. While there are some real nice looking newspaper websites I've actually stopped looking at newspaper websites for my inspiration. I'm looking forward to seeing the redesign. Keep up the great work.
Posted by: Merrell Ligons | November 23, 2005 01:37 PM
StarTribune site is one I've watched for awhile. The current look reminds me of the way some ISPs set up their home pages especially where the user has the option of "reordering" the news. Plus they put the weather at the top. Ya can't go wrong with weather bugs. Sounds like a redesign might include home page that "guides" or "links" to other sections? An index?
Posted by: BobG | November 23, 2005 02:19 PM
I agree that most news Web sites connected to newspapers are lacking in earth shattering, iPod-style innovation. But Web designers, and those who play a part in that process, should not completely turn away from print design.
The majority of homepages are less flexible in terms layout than the average page one of a newspaper. (I'm talking about the whole homepage, not just what's in a flash-based box at the top of the page.) Most homepages have some sort of grid-based layout -- an idea borrowed in part from newspapers. But few Web sites, if any, use that grid to the full extent to give readers an immediate sense how 'big' the news is.
And it's not limited to newspaper-based sites. The BBC's extraordinary site, for example, seems to have only recently began playing with the size of the main photo and headline. Other news sites have a handful of templates to play with but no where near the number of options that a print layout editor has in terms of how wide or deep a photo, headline or story can run.
Most of us are guilty of over-templating.
And there are reasons for this collective visual dullness -- the limitations of Web publishing systems and the necessity to cement certain features above the proverbial fold are among the issues. I also suspect that most Web designers don't play an active role in the daily news cycle as much as they should.
Navigation and flagging of Web-only content are important factors. But those discussions should not get more volume than making drastic visual changes to various pages on the site to fit the news.
The way that certain sites are using flash could help to change this, but what most sites seem to be moving away from a print design model in favor of a televsion-like model, with the box at the top of the page. I'm a fan of news.com's article tools, visually showing how a story is connected to other topics in 'The Big Picture' and the graphical representation of 'What's Hot.'
We redesigned IHT.com last April to go wider, to simplify and expose navigation, and to give us more layout flexibility. But still, the layout does not change as much as it should. And long before my arrival, IHT.com innovated the three column article layout -- an idea taken from print that we kept in the site redesign -- it's been more than five years since that article design was launched yet we still receive unsolicited thank-yous from users who appreciate the readability of the articles.
Posted by: Meredith Artley | November 24, 2005 05:08 AM
Meredith, that was a useful reminder. A lot of our print habits are carried through online. That includes the desire to see moderate-width columns and a hierarchy of types, something which some designers forget.
Posted by: Jack Yan | November 26, 2005 08:28 PM
I may be old-fashioned but I prefer the simplicity in site design. The easier it is to read the more people will read it and use it.
Posted by: Business Woman | December 1, 2005 06:08 PM
I think that those sites shoul have more pictures that they were not able to post in the newspapers and of course feed back. On top of that it would be great if they use 3D format.
Posted by: Anita, web developer | December 13, 2005 04:55 PM