As they used to say in England, TISWAS (Today Is Saturday, Watch And Smile). Oh wait, it’s Friday. MAN, what a week. The news cycle has been nothing short of ferocious, what with the financial meltdown setting a blowtorch to GM, Ford and (latterly) Chrysler’s assertions that they’re going to get the Titanic to New York if it kills you (i.e. taxpayers). Yes, there is that. We’re going to start our Bailout Watch 2 series next week, as it’s only a matter of time– and not much of it– before the whole “Too Big To Fail” shtick pops its head above the proverbial parapet. Meanwhile, we’ve been grappling with the new site design. As expected, the new format killed a LOT of page views; visitors no longer have to click to individual news stories via the home page. We played with the idea of splitting the news posts up, “click through for the payoff” Jalop and Autoblog style, but discarded the idea (any such bisection would be more about us than you.) The good news: the galleries created a net page view gain. When the feature went live, we saw a net gain of 40k page views– in the first day. Fair enough. But that’s from our perspective. What’s your take on the new design? And while you’re thinking about that, Justin and I devote the entire cast to the pall cast over Detroit by, well, lots of stuff.
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I like Shorter Excerpts (~90-100 words or less) on the main page, so that I can have the UI benefit of a Traditional Site/RSS Reader Hybrid.
It keeps me scrolling, & on your site and looking at your Ads, which I don’t mind at all, because you support the ones you love.
Note: I may be in the minority, but I don’t view sites in full-screen. ->So, the last ~70px of the right col gets chopped. -Are Stretchy Pages out of the question?
PS: Net gain for you on the new layout. I for sure look at a Lot more posts here than I ever did.
It’s sort of confusing. When you did this format last you didn’t have 10-15 news posts everyday. :) I’m sort of mixed, but I’ll get used to it!!
I like it and it works great on my iPhone
I think short blurbs would be a good idea. As it is now, the main page changes dramatically over the course of a day, let alone a week, and it’s easy to overlook and/or lose stories. To resolve this problem, however, would require a complete overhaul of the site’s layout. I’m a big fan of categories and of menus. Consider, for instance, the way major news organizations lay out their websites. There is usually a photo panel with one or several main stories in the center of the page with a variety of categories and their associated stories in menus on the rest of the page. Look at news.bbc.co.uk for an example. This sort of format need not be as cluttered and dynamic as the BBC for TTAC, but it could help improve navigation, persistence, and page views. You already have four categories on the right side of the site (product reviews, editorials, news, and car reviews), but you could split that up more. Put all your podcasts in a category, all your photochops in another, and so on and so forth. I’m not really sure what the best answer is, but that’s how I would approach things. ;)
I like it. Pretty much perfect as far as I’m concerned. Glad you put the car reviews on top of the right column as those are what I mostly want to read.
One comment – for the new galleries… either have it so you can click on the right/left on the image when in large view to go forward/back or have the entire image click to close, that way you don’t have to hunt for too long to go to the next image. Making the image click to close (instead of just the close button) should be a very easy change for your programmers to make.
Everything looks great, however the images within the posts on the front page are not cropped properly–some are super-stretched width or height-wise.
SLOW!!! I don’t like it takes a lot of time to download. It’s heavy.
You also altered the order of the right side columns which has confused me a lot. Still do.
And it’s not always the same.
I like the yahoo finance.
The new site is a good job of fine tuning without overloading the interface like most webpages. Simple is good. So the one thing I’d change is to take the gallery thumbnails off the main page. I guess they let you know a gallery is there but you get that when you click the picture/story anyway. Seems cluttered.
Well, the reason your galleries caused so many page views, is because they are set up poorly! Please, Please, Please, when you click on a picture, make the rest of the page grey out, show us the full size image, and include *LINKS* on it to scroll forward or back in that particular series of shots!!! This has actually ground my gears on your site for a long time now, since before the new layout. Otherwise, I do like the changes!
One of these days the IT department at my office will discover this site and block it. So the less clicks, the BETTER! So hopefully this design will help reduce the footprint I leave in my daily surfing history.
I like it. I don’t find it slow to download, and I don’t even have a superfast service–just DSL. I prefer a quick look at what a post is about, which I can then ignore or continue to read, as opposed to a list of post titles that leave me wondering whether I should bother calling one or another up. “Car and Driver Screws Up Bigtime” will get my attention immediately, but “Revolt at RenCen” I might skip and regret it. The new format doesn’t force me to make such a choice.
I don’t like not knowing immediately which ones are just news posts and which ones are editorials. So I’ve clicked a few of the news posts thinking they might be full blown editorials, and all I get is the comments.
Other than that, I’m fine with the new design. But I’m not prone to rocking the boat. I’ll still be coming here every day to get my fix.
I don’t like it. I would rather have it divided by section with recent headline links. The blog format is cumbersome, and on brisk news days, it makes it harder for me to spot articles I know I’ll want to read (e.g., the GM Deathwatch series). The image-heaviness is also a pain on days when Time Warner Cable decides it hates freedom.
It’s a return to an earlier TTAC format, which I much preferred. New material is readily apparent. Gallery navigation could be improved.
I like the layout, but it’s taking a long time to load every last graphic, link, advertisement, and icon, even on my high speed DSL.
Is there a way to at least “let go” of the web page earlier so that the user can begin scrolling if he needs to, while the myriad pieces continue to download?
Forget it on a cell phone, even one using high speed 3G.
Like it MUCH better on my desktop, but the new site is a PITA on a mobile browser! Crashes over 50% of the time and IF it loads, it’s SIGNIFICANTLY slower than before! Could you do a mobile site, without pics but with comments? Basically a narrower copy and paste job?