The News (September 2001 - February 2002)

http://www.thenews.co.uk/

Description

I was asked to create a new design for The News web site. The old site was very popular, averaging 600,000 page impressions per month. Although I designed the site, the backend work would be performed in the Johnston Press Peterborough office, where all the newspaper sites are hosted centrally.

Tools

Fireworks
Photoshop

Technical

The old site had become very difficult to navigate if the user was interested in anything other than the latest news. Although this was obviously the main reason for them visiting the site, a lack accessible extended editorial content seemed to prevent users from staying. I analysed the traffic through the site for the past year and created a 'hit list' of the most popular content. I decided that it should take a maximum of three clicks to reach this popular content. In addition, there should be space set aside for editorial features on the front page (buttons leading off to special features). I felt it was also important that this space wasn't going to be used for advertising (this would be provided in other areas). To provide simpler navigation, the main advertising areas of homes, jobs and cars would be given their own part of the front page, leading off to the individual Johnston Press web sites providing that specific content. As with the old site, the major sections would be colour coded, allowing the user to see where they were in the site at a glance. Coupled with a permanent drop-down menu, this would stop visitors getting lost and closing the browser window. I created several designs, offering different layout types and sponsorship options. The final design, decided by The News management team, was a composite of the different designs.