ESPN's "redesigned" site
Today, ESPN offered a redesign of their hopelessly cluttered home page. The ironic thing is that I almost didn't even notice the change. I started ready the lead story about Carmello Anthony when I realized that my eyes were looking more to the left than usual. Then I noticed the logo had shifted approximately 100 pixels to the left.
Wow. What an incredible job. They managed to change everything without changing anything!
One of ESPN's biggest problems is that they reek of sponsorship and marketing. The whole site is bumped down by a banner across the top (not uncommon 5-10 years ago, but certainly we must have a better solution by now). There is advertising in their media player which loads painfully slow and then surprises you with sound halfway through your browsing experience. The written content is truncated and packed into a grey mess of text. One of the worst parts is that all user great user content is pushed below the initial view of the page. You need to scroll to find things like the your personalized team info section or the SportsNation poll (probably the main reason I even visit any more).
Aren't we past some of these problems? Haven't we found ways to integrate sponsorship and content better than this? I can feel the layers of approval and bureaucracy that this had to go through. The approvals, the arguments over pixel height, the bickering over color and hierarchy. The thing is that everyone at ESPN is probably happy with the compromises that each department made, but they lost someone in all of this - the consumer.
The consumer can acknowledge that there is a lack of usability, an over-saturation of ads, and a gross neglect for highlighting interesting content. ESPN has offered up a way to let them know what you think, but it seems they should have done a bunch of this testing before they launched the redesign.
Can anyone tell me the significant difference between old and new here?
:: The old ESPN site (above) vs. the new ESPN site (below) ::
Wow. What an incredible job. They managed to change everything without changing anything!
One of ESPN's biggest problems is that they reek of sponsorship and marketing. The whole site is bumped down by a banner across the top (not uncommon 5-10 years ago, but certainly we must have a better solution by now). There is advertising in their media player which loads painfully slow and then surprises you with sound halfway through your browsing experience. The written content is truncated and packed into a grey mess of text. One of the worst parts is that all user great user content is pushed below the initial view of the page. You need to scroll to find things like the your personalized team info section or the SportsNation poll (probably the main reason I even visit any more).
Aren't we past some of these problems? Haven't we found ways to integrate sponsorship and content better than this? I can feel the layers of approval and bureaucracy that this had to go through. The approvals, the arguments over pixel height, the bickering over color and hierarchy. The thing is that everyone at ESPN is probably happy with the compromises that each department made, but they lost someone in all of this - the consumer.
The consumer can acknowledge that there is a lack of usability, an over-saturation of ads, and a gross neglect for highlighting interesting content. ESPN has offered up a way to let them know what you think, but it seems they should have done a bunch of this testing before they launched the redesign.
Can anyone tell me the significant difference between old and new here?
:: The old ESPN site (above) vs. the new ESPN site (below) ::
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