Fox News relaunches site with a much cleaner look
Steve Safran September 18th, 2006
There is a shiny new FoxNews.com site up, and it is a significant improvement over the old one. Of course, the old site was an utter nightmare of design and usability, so the bar wasn’t set all that high. The new site gets rid of the jumbled background in favor of plain white. Overall, a clean look that still highlights its stars. Nothing innovative here. Not enough video links for my particular taste - and Fox should be sensitive about that. Fox’s streaming video numbers are well behind MSNBC and CNN. A QUESTION: Why is it that national news channel websites are apparently going to be the last to implement embedded video players on their front pages? Newspapers are even going with embedded video. Why the holdup at the national TV sites of all places?
18 Comments Add your own
1. News Consumer | September 18th, 2006 at 4:45 pm
Ugh. Apparently web design IS rocket science. Fox News, CNN, MSNBC… they all look pretty similar and none really does decent job.
Who decided that news sites have to have a bizillion links all on the front page? Messy, messy, messy.
Keep it clean and well organized, try and minimize the ads and keep it fresh with new content. Is that too much to ask?
2. Cory | September 18th, 2006 at 4:46 pm
Maybe not that innovative, but a MUCH better design than the TV monstrosity that was FoxNews.com.
3. david | September 18th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Wow — not great, but a definite improvement. As much as I dislike CNN on the air, I usually go to CNN.com first every day instead of FoxNews.com, because the FNC site was just too horrible. Now…I’m willing to give it a chance.
4. Swift Loris | September 18th, 2006 at 5:29 pm
*Vastly* better. The old one looked like a nervous breakdown waiting to happen. This one is calm and dignified (which may or may not reflect the personality of the actual news channel…).
5. Charles | September 18th, 2006 at 6:27 pm
The timing of the re-design is kind of funny, because I just looked at all the different incarnations of FoxNews.com through the WayBackMachine(.com?), and saddly/oddly enough, the site has pretty much always been ugly, clumbsy or both. This new site definately makes it look more like a news portal, more of a place you’d want to go to look for the latest headlines.
I definately like the fact that FoxNews.com added the (now pretty common) MyPlaylist feature for their video player. So I can just go around from section to section, add different videos to my playlist, and then just sit back and watch my “newscast”.
I will give them props for going in a more minimalist design, rather than continuing with a barrage of sensory overload. It’ll take some getting used to, but I think it’ll be nice.
6. Mike Escutia | September 18th, 2006 at 9:46 pm
The old site was pretty bad, especially if you tried to load it over a dialup connection. The new site is indeed a vast improvement, though the homepage still has the everything-all-over-the-place feel below the fold. If they can tighten that up, they’ll be all set.
7. Frank Blasi | September 19th, 2006 at 2:55 am
I like the new design much better than the old one. The old design and layout was so bad! I’m more inclined to go to this new site. Better organized. A lot more video, impressive. Site in general seems faster. Still heavy on advertisements though.
All in all, much better. They finally woke up.
8. Jack | September 19th, 2006 at 5:34 am
What’s the giant attaction to the embedded video players?From a sales persepctive they are terrible and discourage clicking through the site. The pop-up players never bothered me, in fact I like them. I usually play the clips and continue surfing the sites while I listen to the audio. As for the Fox News site - agree it’s a grant improvement from where they were, but still nothing groundbreaking.
9. Anonymous | September 19th, 2006 at 7:39 am
This thing looks like some trash designed by IBS!
10. thomas | September 19th, 2006 at 8:22 am
C’mon now, dont trash IBS and not leave your name (not an IBS employee). I know they arent going to win any awards for web design but they are trying ok. Anywho, back to the new foxnews.com, too much white space and poorly placed advertisements if you ask me.
11. Safran | September 19th, 2006 at 9:38 am
The IB sites are better. I default to any site with an embedded player. And IB goes a step further and embeds the associated video story within the text story. Don’t see that on Fox - or any other big nationals.
Stop focusing so much on design. It’s about the information and ease of use. Design does not keep an audience - the information does. As long as they’ve cleaned the thing up and it’s not actively scaring people away, it is a huge, huge improvement.
People get headlines via RSS, text on phone, etc. Design-over-content and ease thinking is done.
12. thedetroitchannel | September 19th, 2006 at 11:57 am
i’m certainly not affiliated with IB, but do they even design sites???
it was my understanding that the clients themselves have the design done and ib works with the designs they are brought.
i thought that’s why you see different layouts for each station group.
maybe i’m wrong.
13. Rocker | September 19th, 2006 at 6:46 pm
There are a lot of smart people who post on LR. Expert, informed opinion on design, however, is not one of the things a reader will find here.
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