23 Comments Add your own

• 1. Mel Taylor  |  December 3rd, 2007 at 7:34 am

  visually, it really is nice. it does stand out from typical tv and newspaper site layouts.

  yet, as far as content….it’s still the same. i also thought we might have seen some more aggressive adoption of web 2.0 tactics; ie: embeds enabled, independent bloggers, linking to competition, rss, UGC, etc.

  i also see that the normal 728×90 banner at the top is now only found at the bottom, and the smiley anchor masthead is now a smaller tile on the side.

  overall, it’s still nice to see ABC take some serious steps in terms of design.

• 2. Jason Parker  |  December 3rd, 2007 at 7:52 am

  Overall, I like it. The videos are great, they’re easy and fast, and some of the best quality on a local site that I’ve seen. Today, I think that it’s inexcusable to still ask your viewers to download Real or WMP.

  I do appreciate the TV-like design. Maybe the gimmick will wear off, but my first impression is positive.

• 3. Brink  |  December 3rd, 2007 at 8:28 am

  Ever notice how many site designers change the design and THEN ask “what do you think?”

  Little late by then, isn’t it? How about asking what the users would like BEFORE the changes are made?

• 4. Don Day  |  December 3rd, 2007 at 8:38 am

  Gag. This goes against almost everything we’ve learned. It looks like a 1999 design with 2007 technology.

  Ugly. Low utility. Heavy on branding and promos and TV-centric junk… low on — oh… I don’t know — NEWS!

• 5. Andrew Gruen  |  December 3rd, 2007 at 8:48 am

  Very glad to see the commenting features, and I _really_ like the keywords shown on the right sidebar. Makes it much easier to do related content.

  I’m also a fan of that search bar at the top center — and it seems to work well too (I just did a search for drunk driving since that’s one of the top stories on the site, and it’s returned as the first search result). Only unfortunate bit is how far down the actual results are on the page.

  I wonder what this design will do to video views… It’s easier than ever to play, but will that translate into more views when our primary audience visits during work hours?

  I also wonder if the dark colors are a good choice. I really enjoy the white space…

• 6. Rocker  |  December 3rd, 2007 at 11:01 am

  I’ll leave the aesthetics judgements to others (looks pretty nice to me), but I think they have quite a few serious usability problems. At least, it was not immediately apparent to me how some of the features work….as opposed to the Hulu beta, for example, which I found instantly intuitive.

• 7. Joe Rosemeyer  |  December 3rd, 2007 at 11:11 am

  Too much gimmick with too little substance.

• 8. Rob W  |  December 3rd, 2007 at 11:29 am

  For tv sites here in NY:
  Seems the best template around is the one CBS-owned stations such as WCBS-TV uses. Easy to navigate, always updated, news and video clearly “above the fold”. And the meat inside such as blogs are always updated.
  The ABC-owned template as used here by WABC-TV is kind of clunky. I’ll give them props for making video easy to find — after all it’s a TV station’s site. Hope they update it frequently.
  Next best is the Fox-owned template that WNYW uses. At least it’s clean. They have to put more resources into it.
  The worst is the NBC-owned template that WNBC uses.
  Can’t ever find video, and if there is any it’s slow and in a tiny box, updates are sporadic, and the site is cluttered beyond compare. The only newsperson there who ever updates a blog is their 83-year-old senior correspondent for crissakes.

• 9. Gorman  |  December 3rd, 2007 at 11:49 am

  They’re taking for granted that people know that the image in the upper-left corner has a link to the homepage, even though it looks like a promo ad. I’m not saying they’re wrong, I’m just saying…

  I think I like it as a homepage, maybe because it visibly tries to remain short. (Though having 14 clips rotate in the main block seems a bit much.) I agree there may be some usability issues as you go deeper.

  And if you’re like me and let your mouse cursor wander, you’ll be in rollover hell. But still, I’ve seen much, much worse.

• 10. tdc  |  December 3rd, 2007 at 12:03 pm

  here we have a player as big as a tv set and every one of the commenters is still calling it a “site” and a “homepage”.

  talk about 1999 w/ 2007 technology.

  if the web ain’t tv, why is everybody tieing their web channel(s) directly to their “4-letter random search result” (including my dear neighbors on o’ahu @ thehawaiichannel.com)?

• 11. Gorman  |  December 3rd, 2007 at 12:25 pm

  Forgive me, I can’t tell if the entire comment is a dig against the comments, the comments and the ABC sites, or mostly the ABC sites.

  In this case, the player, while pretty darn big, is still an element on a page. It is not a standalone player. Are you saying we should not call sites “sites” and pages “pages?”

• 12. tdc  |  December 3rd, 2007 at 12:30 pm

  yes, eventually you’ll be forced to choose a different term.

  i’m not that smart to figure out what the industry will settle on, but my thought is these will eventually be your station’s web channel and all “pages” will be different screens.

  too simple?

  i’m still counting on an early adoption of this switch within the next 5 months.

• 13. tdc  |  December 3rd, 2007 at 12:36 pm

  btw-

  i’d love to get into a full blown debate over this topic but we are going spear fishing w/ some local guys this morning.

  is lr still following the pending marriage of google founder lp?

  aloha!

• 14. Gorman  |  December 3rd, 2007 at 1:00 pm

  That’s fine by me, I’m not trying to kibash change. However, until this yet-to-be-determined term takes hold, please forgive me if I personally call them “sites” and “pages.” And “homepages.” I’m too lazy for the extra syllable required for “entry pages.”

  Have fun fishing

• 15. ALE  |  December 3rd, 2007 at 1:08 pm

  KABC’s Ric Romaro has a new picture. Fark is going to love that - and the fact that comments can be posted.

  The site itself (looking at KABC) - rather nice looking aesthetics wise. They could add more content though - heavy on flash stuff, light on the news.

• 16. Cory  |  December 3rd, 2007 at 1:20 pm

  Wow. It’s certainly different than newspaper sites. Lots of nice touches here. Animated story headlines. Big player for video. Story commenting. The most popular bar. The scrolling bottom of the screen. Etc.

  But, I feel like I just can’t… get… to… the… story. The first thing I did, once I found it, was to compress the big Flash window down to a size that didn’t obscure half my screen. It’s even more annoying when you click a story and you have to scroll beyond the Flash window to begin reading a story.

  In my experience, people who visit TV sites (or news sites as a whole, for that matter) are “scanners.” You quickly scan the top stories for anything that’s interesting, maybe glance at the most popular stories, and move on. These sites, with the big Flash window, are not conducive to scanning at all. It forces me to click around to figure it out. And users aren’t going to waste their time doing that.

  Also, while I’m a big fan of video, I wouldn’t advocate forcing a video-based design on a news site when only 5-10 percent of a site’s traffic originates from video. There’s a balance. Eventually, video will have a bigger share of clicks, but in the meantime, if you overforce it, traffic will plummet.

• 17. peter authurson  |  December 3rd, 2007 at 4:53 pm

  Awful. Terrible. Hideous.

  No ONE who has any clue about news had anything to do with this design or they would realize just how RARELY a breaking news story has good “art” or images to go with.

  (And, thoughout a day, breaking news is basically all you have for a site — or is all you SHOULD have.)

  Instead, much of the time there are logos, generic “murder” with crime scene tape images or B-roll of the outside of a building.

  Did anyone AT ALL think that the pictures in this GIANT TV screen about 90 percent of the time will NOT be compelling AT ALL?

  Designers are great — but they usually are unplugged from reality.

  This point of mine about images being crappy is really the tip of the iceberg of how bad this overall site is.

  Disaster.

• 18. Don Day  |  December 3rd, 2007 at 9:19 pm

  Well, Cory and Peter both said it better than I could. I spent more time on the sites this evening… and I just can’t see any reason to ever go back. I *LOVE* redesigned news sites. I’m always looking for ideas. Maybe there are a few here… but I’m just so turned off by the way these sites fail to meet basic needs that I just don’t see any good practices.

• 19. Rocker  |  December 4th, 2007 at 8:09 am

  “We tried to make them more like television.” Cutting edge thinking, in 2000. Used to hear that all the time then from TV people. You can have a few flourishes, but basic design is better because it works for users. Over-design gets int he way of the content, which is where we should really be focusing our efforts.

• 20. Jared  |  December 5th, 2007 at 8:30 am

  Forgive me if I am redundant, but I don’t like the ABC O&Os new lookat all - for web. Yes, it looks like a great portal for video. It looks like a very good video page - but as the home page? Come on.

  I could see their video hits going up, but what about overal traffic? What is their business model? Have they given up on page views and impressions completely? If so, this is a poor way to do it.

  Do they even know who their audience is? Most of the traffic comes during the day when people are at work. Are users really going to go for a video-heavy site while giving off the appearance of working?

  Maybe they figure they’re alreay losing audience, and that the pool of news outlets is so vast already that instead of competing with that same news, they offer an “alternative.”

  Then again, the web audience is so fickle that maybe the ABC sites will take off. I just don’t see it.

• 21. Safran  |  December 5th, 2007 at 11:50 am

  On the front of the WABC site I was greeted with 8 news stories and 9 promos. This is fundamentally wrong.

  This makes the classic, unfortunate mistake of thinking its job is to promote the newscast. The site could have worked - I like the player and could see myself engaged with it. It’s clean. However, the amount of self-promotion here untenable. I am assaulted with station messages on every page. When I went to the KABC local news page (I should have to go “inside” for local news?) I was greeted with a giant ad for their Doppler Mega 7 Whosiwhatsis Weather Thingie.

  The RSS choices are limited and some are downright bizarre - I can subscribe to an RSS feed for the pages “About WABC-TV,” “About Digital TV and HDTV” and “Interact with WABC TV.” Really? That’s just someone not paying attention to their own feeds.

  We are not looking for promos, we’re looking for information. There is no demand for the volume of self-promotion the stations either think we should have or want us to have. This uses the site in a profoundly TV-centric way that cuts itself off at the knees.

  Answer the fundamental question: Why would I return to this site? For more promos?

  Decent technology, but I feel for the web team here. This was obviously driven by marketing and not a desire for a successful online business.

• 22. tdc  |  December 5th, 2007 at 1:59 pm

  amen.

  good to hear from you.

• 23. Mike  |  December 7th, 2007 at 12:55 pm

  Complete redesigns almost always fail. Avoid them whenever possible.

  They could have tested the waters before jumping in by making one of the features (like sports or weather) of their old site run as this layout/technology to see if it works.

  The biggest issue for me is not the home page but the ’story’ page. As commented earlier, I had no idea there was text below the video when I went to it.

  It’s a classic scroll-blocker layout. Users have no reason to think there is more content below the scroll in the layout.

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