My thoughts on work and life

Redesign of news.com.au

This weekend saw the relaunch of the new news.com.au.

This is a project we’ve been working on for quite some time.  I’m really proud of the way it’s turned out, and it introduces a whole raft of new features not seen on any Australian media site before. These include:

  • Personalisation through drag’n’drop
  • Cookie based Personalisation, so no need to register
  • Ability to dynamically open sub-sections within the page (for instance you can now have a ‘Movies & Television’ content area show on the homepage itself)
  • A visual take on the news (click on the News Visualiser tab)
  • Improved page layout
  • Rationalised and simplified Information Architecture
  • Dynamic infotips and help
  • Improved, higher contrast font colours and typography
  • National & World sections which showcase the best news from around the world (we aggregate from other news sites)
  • Faster page load times
  • Improved navigation
  • Story pages which use highly contextualised linking to give you access to related stories
  • Story pages which include new site-wide navigational footers
  • Cleaner visual design
  • Improved Search form placement and optimised search results page

I’d like to hear any feedback you have on what we’ve done (both positive and negative welcome!)

Please, either reply here or on the news.com.au editorial blog.

3 Comments

  1. Liz

    Lovely, refreshing and brilliant!

    I love the layout, simple clear and concise! The 3 column layout and mega dropdown and feature areas at the bottom. It is much easier to scan, though braking news is a tad lost, perhaps squashed? Some small things don’t line up perfectly and I am not a fan of the white gradient fading on the titles but other than that its a great redesign and layout! 🙂

  2. Christopherkhalil

    Hi Liz! Actually, this post is about the old redesign. I can’t take any credit for the new one, but thanks for the excellent feedback – I shall past it on to the creators of the new design. 🙂

  3. Erica

    I loved the old redesign but hate the new one. The new site look a lot cleaner and lovely to look at but reduces my experience as I can’t consume as many articles as before. With the old one I had all the sections I liked to read at the top. I could select a couple of links each or more to read.

    The new one doesn’t make the definition of what the news is related to so I can’t easily go find news that I’m interested in. I don’t want to have to go to another page to select my news (e.g. clicking on technology at the top), I liked having it all in front of me to select from.

    All this probably means I’m not part of their demographic any more which is a bit sad.

    At least the Courier Mail website still works for me!

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