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Rethinking Navigation And Appearance On Regularly-Updated Websites
By Sanjay Sharma, Section Tech News
Posted on Sun Jan 09, 2005 at 02:38:32 AM EST
The New York Times on the Web is about to embark on a site-wide redesign, driven partially by the new ways people reach online news. "We haven't redesigned the site in more than three years," says Leonard Apcar, the site's editor in chief. "In that time there have been a lot of changes in the way people come to The New York Times on the Web.
- For instance, a good percentage of our readers are not seeing the homepage; they are coming in because of search engines or RSS feeds, any number of avenues ? our own e-mails, other links.
- They're coming in to an article page. Once they get to an article page, we need to redesign how else you engage the site and travel through it." Across the country, at the San Francisco Chronicle's SFGate.com, "We're trying to get people beyond homepage/ click to story/click back to homepage/click back to story/ go somewhere else," says Vlae Kershner, the site's news director. "We're trying to improve the site navigation in a way that will keep users around longer." At The Wall Street Journal Online, Bill Grueskin, the managing editor says "How do you make the Web site even more compelling for people, so it's a must-read rather than a can-read? And then, once you get them there, how do you sink your claws into them so they don't want to go away?"
- Starting soon, Grueskin plans to target bloggers more specifically, "engaging" them, as he puts, in a variety of areas ? technology, business and finance, media, and others ? with appropriate content. In other words you want people to invest their time, attention, discussions, stories, questions and answers so that your space on the internet also becomes a shared space with them.
- Grueskin is looking at "things in terms of the design of the site, the design of the story pages" to help move readers more effectively and efficiently through his site, and to better capitalize on those readers directed to them from blogs and elsewhere.
Most newspaper Web sites are currently designed to reflect the paper itself, with sections for
"Section fronts are very much a newspaper paradigm," says Doug Feaver of washingtonpost.com.
"It's not a very effective way of organizing the site. "
But, "navigational and appearance changes," can help improve the organization of the site, and things like "search-engine preparation" and "a good link off the home page" are important to moving traffic through the site.
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From Editor & Publisher - January 05, 2004 - by Jesse Oxfeld
Newspaper 2.0: Blog Revolution
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