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- 22 February, 2006 -
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Most newspaper websites put off their web redesigns as long as possible. After four years, The Commercial Appeal gave their website a complete overhaul yesterday. The CA’s redesign is of particular interest to me because I personally participated in a previous redesign when I worked in their New Media department.
I really like their new design. It has many elements that are similar to their sister newspaper’s website in Knoxville. Here are my some of my favorite elements of their redesign.
- really like the mouseover tabs in the navigation used in combination with the secondary level of navigation. Moving to a horizontal navigation really gives more room to play with the full width of the page
- Top news scroller gives a way to feature a lot of the great photos on the homepage and give prominence to more than one top story.
- The horizontal bar underneath the top news that changes what it is featuring throughout the day.
- All the great stories on the home page with room for ads and white space. I can see all the stories I’m interested in on the main page, but it really doesn’t look crowded at all.
- The larger pictures on the story page. The web is a visual medium. Thank you for giving the photos more room to tell the story.
As always, I’m sure it was tough getting the new pages up. If you checked out the site yesterday afternoon, you could witness that first hand as the out of date stories slowly came off the page and the new ads in filled the appropriate spaces. I just want to encourage their staff to hang tough as the criticism comes (it inevitably does with a redesign–people hate change). Eventually it will let up and everyone will realize that you’ve done a great job.
I like the rotating pictures on the homepage and the way they flicker through the various sections of the newspaper. It gives more attention to the sections that I might not normally see.