Interestingly, both the leading newspaper sites decided to launch their redesigned site at the same day/week (mere coincidence..or?).
Well, the common theme across the two redesigns is that Indian media sites are embracing international look and moving away from traditional content heavy design to a lot more structured design.
Here is our first hand review of the two redesigned sites
- Homepage is still cluttered, but surely better than earlier – content is better organized.
- News page (i.e. article page)’s font needs a rethink – bigger isn’t beautiful.
- Placement of ads on news page can be played with.
- Less ads on the homepage is a good change – though I am not sure for how long can they continue this way.
- In general, bad use of font typography – colors aren’t coherent and a lot can be improved.
- Nicely done homepage – looks sleek and has an international appeal.
- Beautiful (that’s the right word) use of font typography and colors.
- News ticker sucks – takes away the attention from main content.
- Excessive obsession with ‘moving objects’ – right from ads to tickers to their own properties, wants to show every possible content on the site.
- Ads on news page (i.e. article page) needs a rethink – in general, modules are placed randomly and doesn’t give a coherent look to the site.
- Buggy – doesn’t work well with Chrome and there are some ‘not found’ errors on the homepage.
- Surfacing related content is not at all intuitive
What’s your take on the redesigns?