Sound Effects in the Headlines and More
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch Web site, StlToday.com, recently redesigned to great internal fanfare but not so much to user delight, has a couple of problems. It’s hard for me to choose which part of the paper’s Web site annoys me the most, but here are some of the top candidates:
- The 30 seconds it takes to load the top portion of the home page in Firefox. I’ve learned that the rest of the page loads, so I can get beyond its top headlines to struggle to find stories I want.
- A rollover ad in the middle of the home page that will open itself as I mouse over the page and drape itself over the things I might have wanted to click that weren’t a banner ad:
- A navigational bar that drapes itself over the page every time I mouse down from the navigational bar/tab bar in the browser.
- The fact that I cannot find anything in the stupid navigation, and how the contents of the paper (or at least what I assume might be in the paper, but perhaps I’m mistaken) are hard to get to unless they’re one of the top 5 stories.
- Over the weekend, the only thing that changes are the top headlines and the sports scores. The hard-hitting local news that’s there on Saturday morning will be there on Sunday night.
Couple that with a couple of obvious problems with the site, including:
- Sound effects, or maybe variables/placeholders in the headlines:
- How about the wrong headlines and breadcrumb trails on the article pages:
Seriously, anyone who’s opened the paper lately knows that it contains one ginned up “investigation” story or anecdotal plight of some little guy, a Bill McClellan column of the same, and a pile of AP stories/Washington Post stories. I guess they’re working hard to make sure the barebones/no value to the reader strategy translates to the Internet appropriately.
July 22nd, 2008 at 11:55 am
You forgot to mention the Popups… the &%^@# popups!
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Actually, the pop-unders have always been a “feature” of the site and didn’t get any more obnoxious after the redesign, as did not the Fat Boy and Big Boy banner ads that automatically overlay the page.