CN website updates 2011

[mewmewmew13]

I didn't know what to call it but the aforementioned "rolling carousel" header/announcement thingie ----do NOT like it. It's redundant and irritating, if you're looking at one thing then it scrolls down and highlights something else before you're finished...ugh. One headline area should be enough.
thnx,
mew

 

[agaler]

Hello,

The annoying box at the top that a lot of you have said you hate is called the carousel. I also hate it but it's very useful for highlighting the most popular stories. I'd love to hear your suggestions of how to highlight the most popular stories.

There's a very real opportunity here for our users to feedback on the changes we've made and help us improve the site. Please don't just moan about how it's cramped. Suggest stuff. Dan and his team write content targeted specifically for the site users and the developers and designers work hard everyday to improve the site for you. Even the ads are targeted at you!

Help us improve it. I'm sure Dan can sort out some goodies for suggestions we use.

Cheers,

Andy

 

[Susan Westemeyer]

Cats were not involved or harmed during any phase of testing.

I just want you to know that Kitty is not pleased that her opinion was not solicited......

Susan

 

[titan_90]

Hello,

The annoying box at the top that a lot of you have said you hate is called the carousel. I also hate it but it's very useful for highlighting the most popular stories. I'd love to hear your suggestions of how to highlight the most popular stories.

I don't care what the most popular stories are, I read the articles that interest me not what interest others. Also, it is annoying from the spoiler stand point.

As for the fixed width, not digging it, it makes me feel claustrophobic and looks silly on wide-screen monitors.

 

[agaler]

I don't care what the most popular stories are, I read the articles that interest me not what interest others. Also, it is annoying from the spoiler stand point.

As for the fixed width, not digging it, it makes me feel claustrophobic and looks silly on wide-screen monitors.

Most popular stories was the wrong phrase. I should have said that it's the stories the editorial team have selected as the ones that they feel they should bring your attention to first.

Unfortunately, I can't understand the spoilers argument; it's a news site.

 

[titan_90]

Unfortunately, I can't understand the spoilers argument; it's a news site.

I enjoy watching races but, I am not always able to see a race live so I have to what until later in the day or later in the week. By seeing who won a race in a spoiler it ruins my enjoyment of the sport.

So I keep to just the news editions on your website and hardly go to the home page or other pages anymore so I don't risk seeing a spoiler. I am sure I am losing out on some content I would be interested in on your site and you are losing out on revenue from less web traffic from me.

Many of us voiced our opinion when you did the major redesign 2 years ago. You asked for opinions from your readers but just ignored the majority of them. The same thing is happening again this time but, I will give one more suggestion. I would like to see more articles on and interviews with non English speaking riders.

 

[Anonymous]

Hello,

The annoying box at the top that a lot of you have said you hate is called the carousel. I also hate it but it's very useful for highlighting the most popular stories. I'd love to hear your suggestions of how to highlight the most popular stories.

something like below.

or even better

There is no need for the purple box, and it doesnt fit with the style of the rest of the page. Its like having an odd willow pattern plate in a art deco dinner set.

It interrupts the flow of the page and in doing so actually makes the adverts even more annoying. in the sample above it looks a lot better.

Compared with

Which of the three do you think looks better?

 

[born65]

I would vote for option 1.
I never use the carousel, it's just embarrassing to scroll down.
Just analyse the clicks for the carousel, I am quite sure you don't have many hits, that most of the people are just scrolling down.

Personally i also don't like the fixed with, you don't use in the forum section, why use it on the front page. (for an Ipad it's probably OK)

Personally I would improve the archive function, I never find an old race result and for that kind of research I switch to cqranking.

 

[Anonymous]

I would vote for option 1.
I never use the carousel, it's just embarrassing to scroll down.
Just analyse the clicks for the carousel, I am quite sure you don't have many hits, that most of the people are just scrolling down.

Personally i also don't like the fixed with, you don't use in the forum section, why use it on the front page. (for an Ipad it's probably OK)

Personally I would improve the archive function, I never find an old race result and for that kind of research I switch to cqranking.

Looking at it again I actually prefer the option 1 route. It makes highlighted articles stand out much more than the carousel does.

 

[Daniel Benson]

Titan, we do listen to all the feedback we get, although we don't always put it into practice. That's not me trying to be cute, but as you can imagine, it's not always possible or realistic. We did compromise on the spoiler aspect and there are ways around not reading the carousel if you choose to.

As for the carousel and whether it generates traffic - it does. A huge amount in fact, so while it probably isn't the perfect solution it does have a benefit in that it showcases parts of the site that we - the editorial team - want to present to readers.

If you can point us to better carousels or alternatives that are out there that's cool. I'm not tied to the current one, I've just not been shown a better one yet. Convince me a of a better one and we'll consider changing it. Can't say fairer than that - users having the chance to decide on the top section of editorial.

Cheers

Dan

 

[Daniel Benson]

We're going to try and make a small change to the carousel tomorrow by the way.

Dan

 

[ThomoUK]

Most popular stories was the wrong phrase. I should have said that it's the stories the editorial team have selected as the ones that they feel they should bring your attention to first.

Unfortunately, I can't understand the spoilers argument; it's a news site.

Does not matter what the editorial staff might think is the ones they feel we may want to read; leave that to us... Most of us will read almost everything... and if we don't there is no amount of additional links to it that will entice us to go there. Therefore the whole carousel is redundant - we told you that right when it first appeared. That hasn't changed just because you have made the whole site narrower. But it's even more annoying now that the narrowness means it takes up even more room that could be used to see the rest of it.

And as for spoilers, news is news**, but results are not news but potential spoilers to spoil the potential enjoyment of reviewing the race as it happens either on a delayed coverage (maybe you have recorded it, maybe you are in a different time zone). As a developer you may not understand it, but as your target customer it one of the most important things that can annoy us.

And I really do mean that.

The first big revision had spoilers all over the site and it caused many people to reject the site promising to never come back - not good for your advertisers, not good for anyone. It was stated the spoilers were going to stay. But the policy was changed due to the overwhelming pressure from the readers of the site and the 'hide headlines' option was created to hide the written spoilers as much as possible. I'd hazard a guess that for regular users it's now the default option. I'd like that option to also either hide the spoiler image often used, or change it for a less obvious image. This applies even more in the carousel where the image is bigger and clearer.

** oh yes: news items that also give some of the game away by telling us things that have happened are also spoilers... like for example: 'Cavendish crashes out before reaching the Champs' is a spoiler... despite it being news rather than a result.
I know that it makes reporting as a journo more difficult... but that not the point. If it was easy we'd all do it.

One other thing... Instead of asking us what we think of the changes... apart from a few obvious things (like the narrowing of the site), it's not that obvious what tweaks you may have done... so tell us; we can then go look and give feedback!

Paul

 

[manolo]

I have to agree that it's way too narrow and there's too much wasted space. The main page is harder to read. I feel like I'm looking at a page on my phone, not my computer.

Ditto. It's ugly. I don't like it. (Sigh!) It looks cluttered and unattractive. Switch it back or make it look more like NY Times website, but don't leave it as it is. It's ugly.

 

[Daniel Benson]

Hi Paul, You may on occasion buy a newspaper which of course will have a front page. The contents of that page will be decided upon by the editor and his team. The carousel works on that basis too - in that it's the first thing you see when you go to the homepage. And like I mentioned earlier, traffic suggests that it works. There's a direct correlation between what we place there and hits.

As for your comments on spoilers.... I can't on a personal level agree with you. I'm sorry. We're a news site. Writing a news story without telling the readers what it's about is impossible and hardly practical.

That aside, I'd like to move the chat away from spoilers and back to the new changes we've made.

And my offer still stands. If you can show me a better form of carousel I'd be happy to look at it.

Cheers

Dan

 

[cineteq]

We're going to try and make a small change to the carousel tomorrow by the way.

Dan

I like the carousel, yet *thinner* and NOT purple.
I's important to have the latest races/news up there.
Also, check out ESPN.com width.
You guys are on the right track.

Btw, just in case you wonder I wrote this article on page on keeping readers.
http://www.squidoo.com/time-spent-on-lens

 

[Daniel Benson]

Thanks. That's obviously a really well designed site. I'll show the designers that option.

I'm with you on the purple aspect too.

Dan

 

[Anonymous]

Well i posted a couple of alternative ideas to the carousel, and actually i think the 1st option where you highlight articles works well, people will spot those articles easily on the page.

I actually dont mind the one here
http://www.moredirt.co.uk/

its a lot simpler in design, cleaner and not nearly so obnoxious (and its actually easier to read the articles)

 

[ihatescarves]

Well I know it's redundant to say so, but I also hate the fixed width. Way too narrow.

Other than that, it would be really nice if you'd fix the photo galleries. I can only guess that the current setup is also about revenue, as it's a usability nightmare that does little but generate clicks and page impressions.

I shouldn't have to scroll down to see the whole photo, I shouldn't I have to scroll down to click on the "next" link, and the whole page should not have to load just to display the next photo. Is this the only site left on the internet not using a lightbox-style script to display photos?

 

[flyingporkpies]

Editions harder to get to

I don't like it because the way I liked to read was edition at a time. It is now harder to get to the edition page from the home page having to go via a headline. The archives and 'next edition' previous edition' links were key for me to keep up. I also like to read off my phone and it's even harder to navigate from there now havig to scroll all over the place.
Back to the drawing board.

 

[gregod]

a glitch?

I just read the story on stage four of Pais Vasco. I liked that a mini photo gallery was added. However, I think there may be a glitch. I clicked on the gallery and went to page 2 of the gallery (the story part, of course, does not change). Then I clicked on one of the pictures in page 2 of the gallery. After that I clicked on the "back" button in my browser to return to the story, but the gallery instead of returning to page two where I left it, the gallery goes back to page one.

I hope this explanation is clear. If not I will try to provide more details.

cheers.

 

[josnor]

I shouldn't have to scroll down to see the whole photo, I shouldn't I have to scroll down to click on the "next" link, and the whole page should not have to load just to display the next photo. Is this the only site left on the internet not using a lightbox-style script to display photos?

That's something that's definitely on our list to improve, especially as photos are so important to the site. Unfortunately it's a little complicated given the number of different ways you can get to a gallery. We are working on it though!

 

[josnor]

I don't like it because the way I liked to read was edition at a time. It is now harder to get to the edition page from the home page having to go via a headline. The archives and 'next edition' previous edition' links were key for me to keep up.

They're still there! The Editions page is new, especially for this purpose, and click on an edition and you still get the next/previous buttons underneath the main headline.

 

[josnor]

I just read the story on stage four of Pais Vasco. I liked that a mini photo gallery was added. However, I think there may be a glitch. I clicked on the gallery and went to page 2 of the gallery (the story part, of course, does not change). Then I clicked on one of the pictures in page 2 of the gallery. After that I clicked on the "back" button in my browser to return to the story, but the gallery instead of returning to page two where I left it, the gallery goes back to page one.

I hope this explanation is clear. If not I will try to provide more details.

Perfectly clear I'll pop it on our list to fix.

 

[auscyclefan94]

On my screen (which is quite wide), the actual page only covers the centre part of my screen in comparison to what it use to be which was the whole screen. Any reasons why this may of happened?

 

[ThomoUK]

Hi Paul, You may on occasion buy a newspaper which of course will have a front page. The contents of that page will be decided upon by the editor and his team. The carousel works on that basis too - in that it's the first thing you see when you go to the homepage. And like I mentioned earlier, traffic suggests that it works. There's a direct correlation between what we place there and hits.

As for your comments on spoilers.... I can't on a personal level agree with you. I'm sorry. We're a news site. Writing a news story without telling the readers what it's about is impossible and hardly practical.

That aside, I'd like to move the chat away from spoilers and back to the new changes we've made.

And my offer still stands. If you can show me a better form of carousel I'd be happy to look at it.

Cheers

Dan

That there is a higher rate of click throughs from the carousel is obvious - because it's at the top of the page filling half the screen - therefore most of the links it's highlighting are further down the page out of sight... remove the carousel and you will find the normal links will get used. I'd have thought that was obvious?

As an editor you will of course not agree on the spoilers issue... but remove that part of you away and as a sports fan you should be able to see just how annoying it is - and if your source of results and race news is the site then there seems to be no way of avoiding them due to the editorial policy adopted by Future and it's editors. You might like to move away from this issue, but it is an issue and if you are making changes to the site then this should be right up there as something to look at. It always will be.

I also mentioned that it's useful to know exactly what changes you think you have made to see if we can feedback on them - not a lot of use on seeing if we stumble across things by accident... let us know.

One thing: If when clicking on a results page, then I would prefer to look at the report, then the results, then the photo's... if the report is missing or short but there are photos then I have to scroll down a long way before I get to the results... then scroll back up to get to the photo's. For example the Energiewatch Tour report (yes, I always look at the womens races!). The gallery takes up too much space... although if the page could be made wider then you would be able to fit the results and the photos side by side again!

Paul