New site design

[kukiniloa]

Adspace+++

I'm a real practical guy - I like my stage results clear. AND, I like to be able to view those cool little altitude profiles that I use while I am watching my fave races. Sometimes I even launch googleEarth while watching cycling and check out what they're riding through. I like the experience.

After trying to read the new cyclingnews layout for a few days I thought, why the frack would these people make it harder for me to use their site to pleasure myself? Where are the fraggin altitude profiles that would have been so nice to see during today's fraggin Tour de Suisse Stage 8? (And why is bikeradar so similar? (duh)).

Anyway, i did the math. The space taken up by advertisements on the NEW cyclingnews.com is now 32% greater!!! Yay $$$$. BUY BUY BUY. CARBON CARBON CARBON.

This is almost like homologous blood doping, except it's detectable!!!

 

[EyeBallsOut]

Just remined myself of how GOOD the old CN site was by visiting the Autobus and then looked again ath the new version and this new version is just WRONG.

Sorry I'm looking elsewhere because this is just too hard.

 

[sandyc]

Ufffff!!!

The old website was easy to navigate unlike he new one which is like trying to ride through a bowl of spaghetti.

 

[keepriding]

Bring it back!!!!!

Come on, i don't think one single person is pleased with the new design. Do yourselves and us a favour and RETURN TO THE PREVIOUS VERSION! Just get over it , we will not hold it against you! We would be greatful and never talk again!!!

 

[The fridge in the blue trees]

- use the whole width of the page, get rid of that riders and sunflower background, it's unbelievably ugly. Would give you more space for ads as well...

-

So we added extra functionality, and will continue to do so over the comings days and weeks as the transition from the old site smoothes over. For example, we’ve developed a results engine that allows us to format and upload results faster than before. Soon the results engine will tie into our riders and teams section, with added functionality. It’s not quite perfect yet but it’s going in the right direction.

Sounds good. But until all the new stuff is implemented, how about putting the basics back in? Next stage-previous stage, results of previous years, stage profiles.

- Results and Reports: TdS report stage 8: looks horrible, half the screen on the right is wasted white space. Ster and other races: Report looks ok, but there the results are spaced out.. .name then 700 km to the right you get to see the time difference... Use the full width for the report, results on the other hand are better like TdS stage 8. Or just use a different, bigger font.


- Care less about the look, more, much more, about the content. Some of the stuff you guys have put up over the years was downright embarassing. A completely wrong TdF route, your ProTour fanaticism, while on other (better) sites there was a critical analysis of the effects of the pro Tour you just repeated whatever the UCI said, etc. etc. Or write less "pre-race analysis".. TdF ladder, that weird classiques preview, better nothing than that kind of "analysis". Or of course do it seriously...

 

[excyclingnewsfan]

Very disappointed indeed

I used to enjoy regularly keeping in touch with cycling news from around the world on the old site. It was pleasing to the eye, easily navigated and a good balance between information and marketing.

The new site is aesthetically displeasing, confusing, over-elaborate and a poor replacement. Who needs a blurb for each stage of a stage race or an annoying montage in your face on the home page? I've tried a few times to navigate my way around but now i'm actively looking for other websites to get my cycling fix.

Why fix something that wasn't broken?

Please bring back the old website-it was working extremely well and must have provided value for money for advertisers-something this new site may not in the not too distant future...

 

[Elephantino]

Ditto.....

 

[laziali]

not getting any better ...

Editors, here are a few more observations of S#*T things about the new site:

1. Too many colours, fonts, visuals, flash, weird sunflower motif etc. Looks like it was designed by an eight year old with Attention Deficit Disorder.

2. Black and purple. Really??? That is the best you can do???

3. SPOILERS. This is a DEALBREAKER for many, many of your readers (1,000+ judging by the comments).

4. Race results - where the F*$% are the links to the photo thumbnails???? And previous stage? And next stage?

You guys used to be awesome. Now you just plain suck. Seriously, how can you spend a year (your words) developing this piece of garbage???

ABSOLUTE. AMATEUR. HOUR.
FIX IT NOW CN FIX IT NOW

 

[mpagano]

Come on, i don't think one single person is pleased with the new design.

That's actually not true. My company is extremely pleased that I will no longer be visiting cyclingnews.com 5 times a day minimum on race days. They would like to formally thank the new designers for adding SPOILERS that will effectively reduce my CN visits to maybe once a day early in the morning before races are finished.

 

[pedrospeeps]

Bad design

Thanks to those who posted links to the old (now archived) site. I have to say I felt a wave of relief and pleasure wash through me as I opened up the old site. Illusory, I know, but that's some powerful emotion, and hence buying power.

Have just found a potential replacement to the new CN - http://www.pezcyclingnews.com . Of course, I live in hope CN editors will listen to the veritable barrage of negative feedback, but have to say I am feeling a little less gutted now knowing the Pez may offer an alternative.

EDITORS - BRING BACK THE OLD SITE NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I too am trying to make the best of it. I am totally gutted. I knew about all the other sites BUT (and that is a shout (for the Good Doctor)) cyclingnews was my first port of call because it was so good, so different and worked really well. If the guys at Future ignore all these negative posts they will not have our business, but I am sure they will have some sort of business! Last weeks they sold cycling news, this week they are selling? Well I am not sure…it just is not cycling news.

I really think in these post we have to push the fact that the website designer (I use that term loosely, as it was not designed it was butchered) was not a cycling fan. He properly did not even ride a bike, let alone know anything about Pro cycling. They need to roll this back. Scrap the years (that can not be so) design cash etc and start again, based on the 800 plus loyal cyclingnews users.

Greg said we were not loyal because we were willing to jump ship so quickly. This is an analogy but it works. You could be very loyal to your fish and chip shop for 30 forty years but if they started to sell meat burgers would you be un-loyal to go to another fish and chip shop even after 30 years. No. Cyclingnews is not sell cycling news anymore, I am not sure what they are selling. Poor old Greg and Dan will have to support this until the war is over, I am not sure they are going to be on the winning side, we might never know. I hope people will help us track the site traffic, this was a good link.

http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?&w=40...clingnews.com&

Ok enough, time for my ride…I guess I would be seeing the good doctor.

 

[pedrospeeps]

Advert space

I'm a real practical guy - I like my stage results clear. AND, I like to be able to view those cool little altitude profiles that I use while I am watching my fave races. Sometimes I even launch googleEarth while watching cycling and check out what they're riding through. I like the experience.

After trying to read the new cyclingnews layout for a few days I thought, why the frack would these people make it harder for me to use their site to pleasure myself? Where are the fraggin altitude profiles that would have been so nice to see during today's fraggin Tour de Suisse Stage 8? (And why is bikeradar so similar? (duh)).

Anyway, i did the math. The space taken up by advertisements on the NEW cyclingnews.com is now 32% greater!!! Yay $$$$. BUY BUY BUY. CARBON CARBON CARBON.

I am not those guys would agree with you, but what the heck. I would'nt mind if it were 50% more adds if the site worked and did what I wanted it to do. If the content was there for easy use, but it is not. I think we all came to cyclingnews because it worked. I never noticed the spoiler thing, because it was not there. Now it is, it had added something that I could do with out, in fact now I am starting to think I don't like spoilers, where as before I never thought about it, because cyclingnews was thinking for me. Now that they have had their brains scooped out with a tyre lever...it starts to bother me. Keep up the good work everyone. We have to show these people that we are loyal, we just don't want to see our best friend so trashed like this.

 

[morephyous]

The way the Italian Championships is presented on the site is a bit of a joke. Stage 7, then the content.

 

[Cant Climb]

Have just found a potential replacement to the new CN - http://www.pezcyclingnews.com . Of course, I live in hope CN editors will listen to the veritable barrage of negative feedback, but have to say I am feeling a little less gutted now knowing the Pez may offer an alternative.

Not a bad site.....but the old CN covered ALL desciplines of cycling. That was a big part of the beauty...

 

[manolo]

...drop in traffic to the site.

Just out of curiousity, does anybody know a web site that will tell you the traffic - in hits per months - of a web site? Is there a way to tell who has more traffic? VeloNews, BikeRadar and others compared to CN? Can those traffic meters also pinpoint visits to the CN Forum vs. CN's home page page?

 

[titan_90]

Just out of curiousity, does anybody know a web site that will tell you the traffic - in hits per months - of a web site? Is there a way to tell who has more traffic? VeloNews, BikeRadar and others compared to CN? Can those traffic meters also pinpoint visits to the CN Forum vs. CN's home page page?

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/cyclingnews.com

CN Forum hits vs. Home page hits I didn't think any of the sites provide that much detail(at least in the free versions)? But the CN guys can tell where all the hits are going.

 

[arob157]

New site design very lacking.

I don't know if I would give the tag "design" to the new site. You pulled the format from a sister site and tried to apply it to cyclingnews.com to jazz it up. It looks good, but performance is majorly lacking. The results page is also a complete insult and a total joke to cycling and professional cyclists who are out there busting their butts for results everyday. If you were in the pro peleton would you want a website reporting results and not even be able to format your result properly?

I really think that you should go back to the old format until you take care of the multiple issues your site currently has. I'm no web design expert, but I have been using your site trouble free for years. I know that marketing and sponsor dollars are huge, but you are going to lose those sponsors when they see all the poor feedback and drop in hits on your website.

I will no longer be using this site seeing as it really isn't providing a legitimate service any longer. Someone else will come along and make sure a clean laid out website is handled. Or another idea would be to go back to the drawing board and make it better. Not copy an old idea and then execute it poorly. I like the BikeRadar website, but the design really does not work for cyclingnews' application.

Also for a point of recommendation, take Cycling.TV as an example. They went through all kinds of beta testing on new website designs in which they gave paying users the chance to offer feedback. They had a bumpy and rough road and now have a decently solid design. It isn't quite as easy to use as the old website, but it gives their sponsors a better forefront to display their ads and then gracefully bow out of the way to catch coverage live or highlights of the same races you are covering.

Do work and clean things up. People like your site a lot and respect your coverage.

Off soap box.

 

[pedrospeeps]

a way out for you

Ok do not tell everyone...keep between us on this forum...Dan, Greg Doc and others....just say (or have your PR firm say) that the website crashed (because of customer overload) and the backup were lost so you HAD to go back to the old format while you sort the new website out...it could be a few month, a year or never, but we are work on it. We will not gloat..we will say thank you..we will not even mind if the backup for this forum gets lost too...it will be as though nothing happend. Then during the Tdf you can get your readership back, cash boxes full of lovely money and it can all be your idea (we will not tell anyone)

How about that...not honest enough for you...it would work...trust me.

 

[awesometown]

We patiently await cyclingnews 2.0 2.0

I actually read through every page of this debate...wow..

I know from a career in advertising, marketing and public relations that a backlash of this level should never be ignored. I know that corporations need to be able to admit wrong doing. As much as you are all nervous about keeping the fine people of Future Publishing happy... you are alienating the people who made cyclingnews popular and profitable in the first place. You have a loyal readership with multiple daily page views that probably rivals major news sites.

You're combination and translation of news from around the cycling world into a language accessible to growing cycling markets like the united states was something HUGE. When I first found this website 10 years ago at 16 it opened up the world of cycling in the way that the bland content of a copy of velonews couldn't.

But through all of that there have been some irksome points: Shoddy editing, limp-wristed tech reviews, terrible grammar, translations to english... and a concentration on Australian riders and races that you seem to have out grown a long time ago.

Now all the things that I loved about this site are gone. Its a damn shame. Not that I cared for the look of the old site, or hate flash or think it doesn't come up on a mobile browser (it does, I can bring it up on my iphone)... Its just how f***ing impossible its become to navigate or even just do the simple things I loved like look pictures from each stage! How much loading is needed just to go from picture to picture?

More than anything I'm just sad... sad to see you guys stumble so friggin' hard. Its still not enough to make me read pezcyclingnews.

 

[scottsmack]

Site traffic stats since redesign

According to Alexa (which is not perfect, but usually a good indicator) every single usage stat is down since June 15. Reach, page views, pages per visit, time per user. And this is happening despite the new format which should be improving total page views and pages per visit because of the way the content has been chopped up! And, this is happening during the two final tests before the TDF (Dauphine and Switz).

CN, I realize this forum is us just *****ing with each other and getting platitudes from operations people and not business folks, but HELLO?? This isn't going to blow over.

The new site isn't really all that bad. Many of the formatting issues have been resolved, and i'm sure the content issues will be restored and fixed. Everybody will figure out how to navigate and things will settle down.

Except...

What is killing you is SPOILERS. The fact that you continue to ignore this is funny, pathetic, and tragic all at once. Honestly, I've never seen anything like it from a modern company with direct access to user feedback.

Again, good luck!

Scott

 

[Bridgeblox]

New site

I've only registered on the forums to in turn register my view on the new site. It's really not good. Site seems to be quite buggy with Safari on a mac, certainly crashes it more than any other site. The website seems slow and is much harder to navigate around. Was it really so bad before that it needed such a wholesale change? It was quick, easy to navigate around and I knew where stuff was. I'd log in twice a day at least, plus follow all the big races live. Not any more. If it carries on like this I'm off elsewhere.

 

[Anonymous]

spoilers!!!!

at the very least remove the spoilers!!!

 

[Andy.G]

My two cents worth:

I thought at first everybody was just whining too much about changes ... and I even liked my first views ... which are often 3+ times a day - EVERY day ... yes, I'm a self-confessed obsessive cycling idiot.

I have found the 'spoiler' headlines have stopped me going further most days during the TdS ...

Oh, Cancellara won the prologue ... Hmm, back to form.
Aaah, Colombia Highroad ... mmm.
Ha, Cav wins again ... he's just smacking it this year.
Aaah, Colombia yet again ... wow.
Yes, no doubt Cancellara would win a 39km ITT ...
That would be that then.

And when I do ... I REALLY miss the old 'open up the gallery' of the photos of the day ... these thumbs are waaaaaay too small.

And, (not just applies to new format) the 'click photo to view next' feature - why not have FWD click right of screen and BACK click left of screen ??

I LOVE CYCLINGNEWS.COM - I go NOWHERE ELSE.

You'll get the balance ... just kill the spoilers for the TdF ... pleeeeeease.

 

[jmo001]

Arrrgh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have now changed CN as my homepage on my home computer as well as work computer. I have mobile internet on my laptop, turned it on this weekend only for it to take AGES for it to load up. Then when it finally loaded, the SPOILERS told me who had won the stage of the Tour de Suisse!!! I was going to watch the last few kms on Youtube then read the report on CN... DOUBLE ARRRGH!!!!!!

1) Can't view the new site on my mobile
2) Takes ages to load on my laptop
3) Stupid SPOILERS ruin everything

= CN no longer my homepage.
You guys need to start listening to you users.

 

[saabaru]

New Site = BAD

I think you have taken a step backward and instead of making the site more enjoyable it is almost annoying.

I really enjoy your content (I have been a frequent, almost daily, vistor for 5 or more years) but the new format is dissappointing; for me cyclingnews has gone from my primary source of cycling news on the internet to a secondary source.

I'll keep looking but with no where near the frequency.

 

[Frozenrope]

Oh No

This new layout is terrible! I'd rather have the old bill's site layout. Arrrh!