

Gawker's Numbers Tanking - tgrass
http://therawfeed.com/gawkers-redesign-is-killing-the-network

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thechangelog
I can explain part of it: the hash based URLs are completely broken in Canada
(and presumably elsewhere). Any link I follow (e.g. gawker.com/#12345)
redirects to ca.gawker.com. The hashes aren't preserved on redirect, and I'm
not interested enough in the content to go searching.

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corin_
Same for me in the UK, can't remember the last time I clicked a Gawker link
and ended up reading the content.

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ghshephard
It's interesting - I'm down in Sao Paulo, Brazil right now, and I spent the
better part of 15 minutes trying to read a story there. Every time I tried to
enter the URL it kicked me into a .br page and I was unable to find the
original story.

I eventually just gave up.

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aphistic
Is this any surprise considering their new design? The only way I can read any
Gawker site is via an RSS feed and even then I can't stand to read past that
and actually visit the site.

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duke_sam
I know a number of people who fell back on using the mobile version but it was
so much hassle they just found alternative sources. I used to hit Kotaku and
io9 multiple times per day but the new design meant I spent more time trying
to find stories than actually reading. Was a pity to lose sources that were
usually pretty solid.

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jokermatt999
I stopped visiting Lifehacker not just because of the redesign, but also
because the noise began to drown out the signal. They post a ridiculous amount
a day, and I just wasn't interested in most of it. I'd rather follow something
with fewer posts and much better quality than be overwhelmed by their
firehose.

Of course, that's just for browsing by RSS. I suppose the "tons o content"
model is geared towards people that visit occasionally over the course of a
day. But with the hideous design, why would you want to?

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mattcurry
Also they F-ed up the RSS feeds. Take a look at this one for the top stories
on Deadspin: <http://deadspin.com/tag/top/index.xml>

Barely anything since Feb. Before then there were 4-5 items per day.

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z2amiller
They've F-ed them up worse than that, a few months ago I got a full feed of
Fleshbot in the place of my Gizmodo feed. Fortunately I closed my laptop in
time, or it could have been a much more interesting meeting at work (No doubt
followed by one with HR)

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eli
With their AJAXy interface, I wonder if perhaps page views are not being
counted properly. Put another way, I'd like to see a chart of ad impression
numbers.

I'm sure the redesign cost them, but I'm surprised it's such a big hit.

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3pt14159
I love how designers and product visionaries absolutely refuse to test major
redesigns. Hey guys, why not fork 1% of the traffic to your major redesign and
see how it performs? Millions of dollars on the line that could have been
saved with about $5k worth of developer time.

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patrickk
Lifehacker's numbers are conspicuously absent. I've read through other sources
that their pageviews took at a bit of a hit but remained relatively steady. I
guess that piece of information didn't fit nicely with the story.

<http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/17/gawker-redesign/>

EDIT: link

~~~
eli
<http://lifehacker.com/stats-month> shows lifehacker pageview declining pretty
significantly this year and a _dramatic_ decline in "new visitors." (Somewhat
fittingly, the buttons on the stats pages don't work quite right for me)

~~~
TillE
I said at the time that the redesign would hurt Gawker, especially when they
responded to the backlash with "well, everybody complains when Facebook
changes" - not realizing the power of Facebook's social stickiness. But that's
quite shocking even to me. Their own stats show visitors cut to _a third_ of
what they were in January.

I guess UI matters, huh?

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hugh3
I discovered last week that the redesign isn't so bad if you go to "Blog
view". I don't know when that got introduced between the day I stopped reading
gawker sites due to the redesign and last week, but it's reasonably
inoffensive.

Still, every gawker site has a less-annoying competitor, and I'm guessing that
most of the folks who used to read the gawker version are now reading another
version with the same damn stories. Once people have been driven into the arms
of a competitor it's tricky to get 'em back.

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brianbreslin
One of the commenters mentioned the geo-redirects. I'm assuming this doesn't
affect the individual domain's traffic count (since the source measures entire
domain?). Now what if they are charging substantially higher rates to the
advertisers though, since they are keeping the time shown of an ad up.

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jarin
I don't really mind the redesign since I usually get linked to individual
articles instead of browsing around their sites, but that grey line at the
"fold" really bugs me. Anyone else get that?

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maxharris
This is just fine with me. I still won't read Gawker sites because of what
they did with the iPhone 4.

