
How Not to Design a Home Page - mattculbreth
http://academicvc.com/2011/11/04/how-not-to-design-a-home-page/?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed
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adamhowell
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.

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T-hawk
The content classifications are arguable. The main headline is about a movie,
which is a million-dollar investment and business; and it's Friday, peak day
when moviegoing and news consumption overlap. I think it'd be quite reasonable
to count that as business news. The distinction between navigation and
business news can also be fuzzy; it's not clear why the bottom-left links to
headlines count as navigation but the bottom-center links count as content.
Finally, everything below the fold is ignored, where the proportion of content
does improve. (Above-the-foldness is relevant but not the entire story.)

The classifying was obviously done with an agenda in mind to push this story;
take it with a grain of salt. (Don't get me wrong, the page is indeed still
content-light and fluff-heavy, but to cite 99.5% is misleading.)

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glassx
Here's what I see when I tell my browser to pretend it's an iPhone:

<http://imgur.com/QVpwz>

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

~~~
jacques_chester
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.

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grecy
I'm always shocked when I see screenshots with ads on webpages, with adblock
plus, I've basically forgotten that's what the web looks like to a lot of
people. I can't imagine using the web without adblock.

~~~
pavel_lishin
And flashblock.

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atldev
There is a competitive advantage for startups that embrace this. Hipmunk gets
a lot of their user experience love by eliminating the single digit content
problem that Stephen describes here vs. Expedia, Travelocity, etc. They even
have a slide that illustrates the wasted space on competitor sites with color
boxes.

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MJR
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.

~~~
wanorris
> 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.

~~~
MJR
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?

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rhizome
_Measuring generously, 284×22 are devoted to news. That’s half a percent for
content, 99.5% other stuff._

Alas, it's not such a mystery if you read that as "99.5% profit."

~~~
InclinedPlane
These are not independent variables though. People won't visit your site just
to see the ads (milliondollarwebpage notwithstanding). In order for your ads
to generate revenue you need _content_ that people want to see. And you need
people to revisit your site often.

If you just cram a lot of ads into a page you'll increase revenues for a
little while, then your readership goes away and then your cpm rates go way
down.

If you ensure your site has engaging content and is a pleasurable experience
for your readers then you'll be able to make more revenue off of fewer ads.
More so if you go the extra mile and ensure your ads are high quality and
relevant to the audience (to the degree to where eventually they almost become
endorsements and recommendations). Take a look at penny-arcade.com, for
example, I can guarantee they make plenty off of those ads and they wouldn't
be doing better if they'd simply crammed the screen 99% full with other ads.

It's just as important to cultivate your own brand (which is ultimately what
you are selling by way of 3rd party advertising) as it is to hawk other
people's brands.

~~~
tmarthal
... and the idea is that there are advertisements which generate revenue on
the second, third and fourth page in the site that they visit. So his 99.5%
metric is that 60% or so of that screen is trying to drive traffic to other
articles on the site.

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rhizome
Hmm, not sure I'm following you here.

~~~
tmarthal
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.

~~~
InclinedPlane
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.

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true_religion
ATBNews is just badly named. They write about more than just Business news so
its an injustice to them criticize them for not listing _only_ business news.

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alexwolfe
I think there are plenty of examples of poorly designed web pages out there
(most are poorly designed). The trick is describing what makes a great home
page and why. Even without the color coding I think many of us could see how
poorly laid out this page is.

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kstenerud
Could someone please explain what, exactly, is wrong with that page? I mean,
other than the fact that it's full of ads.

Edit: This is not a troll post. I really don't see anything wrong with that
site, but apparently lots of other people do.

