CNN.com Gets a Radical Redesign
CNN.com, one of the top 25 websites in the US, just announced a radical redesign of its service at a press event in New York City. The new CNN.com homepage will be split up into three parts. On the left, CNN will now highlight breaking news stories, the middle section will feature older stories and a 'highlights' section, and the right sidebar will be customizable with personalized weather and sports scores. Right beneath the fold, the new CNN will feature a list of 'editor's choice' stories - similar to the NYTimes's 'Inside NYTimes.com' section. The new site will go live next Monday.
According to CNN's General Manager of CNN.com Kenneth Estenson, CNN.com currently gets about 1.7 billion page views and 100 million video views every month. In total the CNN homepage has been called up over 120 billion times since its first iteration in 1996.
CNN clearly put a lot of thought into this redesign. As William Hsu, CNN's VP for News Advertising Sales for Asia Pacific told Exchange4media.com earlier this week, the CNN team "did a lot of research, biometric research, in Europe" (update: a CNN spokesperson just told us that this study was done independent of the site redesign). According to Hsu, these studies showed that very few users ever went beyond the current homepage. Because of this, the new homepage will show far more content but will also make it easier for readers to navigate the site.
More Emphasis on Video - Including Videos from TED
At today's press event, CNN also stressed that the new site will integrate more of its TV product. Instead of keeping video and text separate, the new CNN.com will bring the two together. 50% of CNN's users already watch both the video and read the story, so bringing the two closer together is a smart move for CNN. CNN also announced a partnership with TED, which will bring TED videos to a completely new audience.
NewsPulse
The new homepage will also have a new feature called 'NewsPulse.' This will allow users to reorganize news stories by correspondent, subject, or keyword. Today's press event was low on specifics, but this looks like a good way to personalize CNN's homepage and to find interesting content on the site.
Similarity to CNN Go
CNN also recently launched CNN Go, which focuses on news for the Asian market and also has a more magazine-like layout.
What About the Competition?
We have also heard that MSNBC will soon launch a redesign of its own. While we aren't aware of any specifics yet, the new MSNBC will focus on adding value to news wire stories by bringing together more material from NBC's affiliates and a larger focus on interactive elements designed specifically for MSNBC.
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I dig the high contrast. But only real use will determine if it's any easier to use. Hopefully it won't just be a lateral movement in quality and ease of use.
It looks like RWW Brasil ! www.readwriteweb.com.br
The new design looks great.
FYI, this site redesign was done by HUGE in Brooklyn. Glad to hear the positive reaction!
http://www.hugeinc.com
The VP's name is Hsu.. not Hso
Ugh, this looks like a step backwards to me. The new focus is clearly the main article, but finding other "recent" content isn't clear. Why push it so far down the page?
I'll miss you, current CNN homepage.
Read the whole story here
http://thetechnologycafe.com/cnn-com-gets-a-revamped-improved-facelift/
I don't like the new page at all.
New brand&navigation bar is improvement, comparing to previous version, but the entire body of main page is surprisingly ugly.
I don't like the new design at all; the ad space in the top right is not called out as ad space and feels like they're trying to slide in by as actual content. I'd also prefer to have headline listings at the top, not the photos.
Overall, it's clumsy and unattractive.
The type on the new CNN homepage is microscopically tiny. What in the world were they thinking?
Egads! Where to begin?
When I saw a screenshot of the new design late last week, I was optimistic that CNN had finally developed a layout that worked. Unfortunately, having seen the new design in action, I give it a huge thumbs-down.
My gripes:
* I agree; the font is way too small.
* The latest news is now only 33% of the page above the scroll. What were they thinking? Breaking news addicts like me revisit news sites several times a day to see what's new. In the new design, the latest news is by far a minority of what's at the top. I don't want to see the giant block of video in the middle or the thumbnail videos under it above the scroll. I don't mind the ad, though. After all, they gotta pay the bills.
* The previous design was way too text-heavy. This one is too graphic-heavy, at least at the top.
* The top headlines organized in a grid farther down the page are too squeezed. Even with the 8-point Arial font, there isn't enough room to offer compelling headlines.
I give CNN credit for trying to evolve their site to meet current expectations and focus more on video, but they really failed here. Kill it and start over.
If you want to see a great news site, then behold MSNBC.com. It's been my favorite news site for at least 8 years. They really know how to balance the latest news with judicious use of video, opinion and graphics. Hopefully MSNBC doesn't redesign their site any time soon because it's just about perfect now, IMHO.
Font size waaaaay too small. All video should be on a separate page. Too many graphics up top. Breaking news stores should be near the top. Please reconsider the design and don't make me have to go to the Drudge Report for news.........
I've always gone to the CNN Home Page first thing when I log on ...........now it takes too long to load.
BIG STEP BACKWARDS from the usability-tested site of 2006 by Razorfish!
For readers who actually read the TEXT ARTICLES on CNN.com this redesign is an abysmal failure. A miniscule left rail with small text links is just not enough for this to be a good "at a glance" news site.
Additionally, the handling of the text article pages themselves is atrocious. Are they serious about those awkward text wraps, media viewers that take entire "above the fold" (no scroll) area, and 100 word articles that require 3000+ pixels of vertical scrolling???
In short, could we make the text articles any harder to find or read?
It's understandable that with online video viewership up an astounding 40% from last year, than CNN would want to make their web content more video-centric. Still, this is NOT the way to do it. If anything, I could see a better video viewer with less page loads and annoying pre-roll ads but this clearly not what we've been given...
I think HUGE inc. in Brooklyn should know better than to commit the huge number of basic usability design mistakes they have here. But the primary ones have to do with what we designers call "legibility".
Legibility in design usually pertains to differentiation of elements—i.e. variation of size and consistent color coding which establishes a hierarchy of information. It's the same considerations that go into designing a glass cockpit or any GUI.
The idea is not to look sexy but to gear things towards human cognition. Anybody can just pack in a bunch of information or thumbnails. That's what a classifieds section in an old newspaper did. It takes a truly good design to weight certain content more than others, letting the eye flow easily from one element of information to the next.
Looking at this CNN redesign, I get many similar-sized boxes and a mass of thumbs in an amazingly static configuration. After so much time and effort to study usability by the Razorfish design people a few years back, this is a real let down.
I like other work by HUGE but this is a mess. Sorry guys!
I really hate the new page. I used to check CNN multiple times per day. I actually searched today to see if others disliked it as much as me. I now see myself breaking a routine of years of checking CNN to instead going to BBC, Google News, and WSJ more frequently.
Oh well...someone out there must like it. It'll probably adjust over time.
I've used CNN as my homepage for years. Would check it several times a day for updates. Finding the headlines in the category headings was easy and it was easy to navigate to specific headlines within a category.
With the new format, now I have to make an extra "click" to navigate to my areas of interest. It has taken away the usefulness of having CNN as my homepage.
Now I am experimenting the MSN.com and USAToday. One of the these will wind up being my new homepage.
Hope CNN gets the traffic volume they wanted with the format change, but I think there will be a lot of frequent viewers of CNN that will have a similar response. I think they've probably tried to put too much content on the page, and in the end sacrified those aspects that kept people like me loyal. Sometimes less is more.
I'd pretty much given up on CNN TV long ago. They redeemed themselves somewhat during the election cycle (though I also spent time on MSNBC and many political sites and lots of NPR time). The website was generally a quick update of top stories but I do not like the new CNN website whatsoever. It's cluttered and tacky like so many local affiliate websites. I am bailing and making NPR my home page.
Hate it.
Why was the research done independently of the site design?
Like most here, I think it's not an improvement. Large, unused areas of red and blue pixels supplanting news content. Type and logo don't work as well in reverse. All those black, gray, white rectangles... This is beyond organization. It's outright sterilization which does nothing to improve assimilation of the content.
The redesign is a failure.
I don't like it. I primarily go to CNN.com for breaking news and current top stories. I don't care for the stories in the middle section. This section occupies most of the space and making it hard to read the content I care about (which is in the left section).
The radical redesign 'fixes' that which wasn't broken. One of the problems they seem to resist addressing is the tendency of the far right column to 'wrap' under the others. This site is far too busy looking with little of value visible above the scroll.
I really dislike this new design. The bright red is too harsh on the eye. CNN.com was my go-to page for news, but not any longer. I am moving on to another news site. Really bad decision, CNN.com.