

What's wrong with our website? - one2many

I work on the digital advertising side of the newspaper, and don't know much about coding, but I get the feeling we could do more to improve the structure, design and user experience.<p>If you could change one thing with pe.com, what would it be?
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yurivictor
Some quick thoughts:

• Ads are eroding the experience. Focus on high impact inventory with fewer
competing ads and alternatives to display. The goal is higher revenue and a
better experience.

• Need to design beyond news. Give users indispensable tools for their daily
routine and provide context beyond the news cycle.

• The site lacks a voice. You live in your community. Your site should look
and sound local.

• Local news seems to be your core asset. Provide a local filter on
everything. Allow passive and active customization for better relevance.

• The navigation and taxonomy are confusing. By housing everything, you
showcase nothing. Decrease top navigation by increasing in-page navigation.

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reason
Writing this on my iPad, so apologies for being terse.

1\. Top half is really busy. Ads above and below header image are way too
distracting, so the name of the site isn't immediately evident.

2\. Ad right above navigation bar is confusing and makes me think the nav bar
is part of it.

3\. Titles and images aren't arranged right. I thought the title to the
article of the main image was the one to the right.

4\. Trim down on those lists of breaking and local news stories and bring some
of the other categorical content up. Sports/photos/videos/etc are way down
below.

5\. The 3 column structure is too cluttered. Either give it more white space,
or cut it down to 2 with the sidebar composed of mini-sections. Right now the
main story does not stand out.

6\. Reduce overall number of stories on each page. My eyes are darting all
over.

7\. Ajax, gradients, rounded corners, openid, CSS4, node.js.

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epc
I'd eliminate any scripts you're not actively using and generally focus on
reducing the size of the pages.

The home page "feels" very heavy — it takes a long time to load, and
inspecting it via Google Chrome Developer tools there's several scripts which
fail to load entirely. I'd challenge whether you absolutely need TinyMCE for
example on your homepage, and any of the associated scripts.

A lot of the yahoo yieldmanager javascript (if it's needed at all) should be
pushed into a separate cacheable file.

There's a mix of relative URLs and complete URLs, I'd strip out the repeated
<http://www.pe.com/> as much as possible.

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one2many
How skilled a developer would we need to handle these issues?

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epc
I honestly don't know. Someone with experience using the developer tools
within Firefox or Chrome or Safari to review the code and see what you're
really using vs. what's been thrown in with the kitchen sink.

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neilk
I don't see how anyone can answer this without knowing how your customers and
audience use the site. I could critique the fonts and such, but sometimes
sites with downright ugly design are very useful to their user base, like
Craigslist.

If you are asking such a general question I suspect you might not be doing
enough measurement.

You can try Google Page Speed for some optimization suggestions but you're not
doing badly, except for serving unscaled images (ouch). I'd fix that at least.
[https://developers.google.com/pagespeed/#url=www.pe.com&...](https://developers.google.com/pagespeed/#url=www.pe.com&mobile=false)

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one2many
We are doing tons of measurement. We use Google Analytics, Omniture, and
Parse.ly. We are literally drowning in data.

I have only been in the industry a few years, but most newspaper websites that
I come across do the same thing. We product 80-100 new pieces of content per
day and it is very challenging to create a design that works.

About our Audience: Our audience is the 5 million residents in the Riverside,
CA area. As we are right next to Los Angeles, we do not have dedicated local
TV news. There are 13 other newspapers in our market, including the LA Times.

About 30% of our audience accounts for 80% of our uniques & page views.
Traffic picks up around 9 and peaks around lunch.

We have seen one trend: Homepage -> article -> homepage -> article etc for the
'top stories'

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hcarvalhoalves
Just because the site is not "fresh" doesn't mean it's bad. I found it quite
usable. Things you can do better at:

1\. Give more "room" for the content to breath, this improves legibility,
specially at the home page where the reader is more likely to skim the
content. Move unrelated content further away.

2\. Follow a grid, and have all content block following the same margins. Most
are uneven and that makes it hard to understand which things are related, and
which aren't.

3\. Improve typography. Use consistent styles for all your titles and body
text. Assign consistent sizes and line-spacing.

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RollAHardSix
One thing: Minimalist your home-page. Your header looks very crowded.

I did like the cleanliness of your general homepage layout however. I found it
very easy to rest my eyes on your major news stories almost flowing
'naturally'.

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village88
I would simplify what you have on the website. There are way too many
distractions. Remove the distractions, organize the site so that you only put
what the users want to see on the page.

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dwynings
If you're considering a redesign, I'd highly suggest
<http://www.informationarchitects.jp/en/projects/>

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davidm
Remove the top banner so that the masthead /register / sign-in is the first
thing you see.

You should get better brand recognition and more registrations/logins.

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fourmii
It's really cluttered. I find the Register, Sign in, Member Center, Subscriber
Center area way too busy. Maybe you coul simplify the register/sign-in box?

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Abban
I would widen the article area by moving the smaller sidebar or advert panel
down the page. Feels like you're trying to get too much content above the
fold.

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dbrosius
it takes too long to load

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sebphfx
I would put the columnists and bloggers section on the right side, under the
search widget. It looks empty a bit. That's just my opinion. Reilk is
absolutely right though.

