How Not to Design a Home Page • Hacker News Board

Re: How Not to Design a Home Page

#21

Post by adamhowell » Fri, Nov 04, 2011, 10:20 PM UTC

I came on as the lead designer at The Business Journals late last year after this redesign was launched -- and while I disagree with the 99.5% number -- I agree 100% that there was lots of room for improvement.

And that's why we're rolling out a redesign of the main homepage in a couple of weeks:

http://cl.ly/25071M0m1R2t3Z0F053B

There are a lot of factors at work with the design of any homepage, and that was certainly the case with the current design -- really tight deadline, new CMS, work was contracted out to a design agency, etc.

But our great local business reporting deserved better and I'm happy to say we're getting there.

Re: How Not to Design a Home Page

#22

Post by bane » Fri, Nov 04, 2011, 11:21 PM UTC

glassx wrote: post #13

Here's what I see when I tell my browser to pretend it's an iPhone: http://imgur.com/QVpwz

It's funny how the solution to solving web page navigation is to reinvent Gopher.

Re: How Not to Design a Home Page

#23

Post by InclinedPlane » Sat, Nov 05, 2011, 6:16 AM UTC

tmarthal wrote: post #19

rhizome wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, not sure I'm following you here.

What I was trying to connote is that 60%+ of that home page was devoted to driving traffic to other stories in the same site. A publisher's home page shouldn't necessarily be a place for content (even though it is serving ads). A page's home page is to drive traffic to articles in the site (that _also_ serve ads); this is the 60% navigation and "Non-business Related Filler" that the article talks about.

If you think the entire purpose of a site is just to generate advertising revenue then you should give up, close down your site, and replace it with a domain parking site. You'll still get ad revenue but your costs will be almost nothing, and you won't have to put any work into it at all. It's win/win.

Re: How Not to Design a Home Page

#24

Post by jacques_chester » Sat, Nov 05, 2011, 11:29 AM UTC

bane wrote: post #22

glassx wrote: post #13

Here's what I see when I tell my browser to pretend it's an iPhone: http://imgur.com/QVpwz

It's funny how the solution to solving web page navigation is to reinvent Gopher.

Our entire industry is Buddhist metaphysics writ small, particularly the circle of death and rebirth.

Ideas in this industry never die. They merely turn up later with different names.

Re: How Not to Design a Home Page

#25

Post by MJR » Sun, Nov 13, 2011, 3:19 AM UTC

wanorris wrote: post #16

MJR wrote: post #9

This is a bizjournals.com site - They run 41 of these city specific business journal sites as online companions to a weekly print edition of the journal. There's nothing special about this - pull up any newspaper or online news site and you'll see the same thing.

> There's nothing special about this - pull up any newspaper or online news site and you'll see the same thing. I'm pretty sure that this is not in disagreement with the author's point.

If the same critiques can be made of any newspaper or online news site - then why choose this one? What makes the Atlanta Business Journal site(one of 41 others) even worth writing about?