I am a big sports buff. When fall comes around, and my friends are gearing up for the new season of Big Bang Theory, How I met your Mother or some other TV show, I get giddy about watching Peyton Manning and Aaron Rodgers air it out on Sunday afternoon. As an avid sports fan and a habitual internet surfer, I used to spend a lot of my spare time going through scores, fantasy and articles on Yahoo Sports.
But the new layout of the Yahoo Sports page hasn't made me a happy camper. As a software engineer myself, I do realize user's tendencies to resist change - especially on websites they frequent. I remember whenever Facebook would go through a layout change, everyone would complain about how much Facebook sucked - on Facebook! I gave myself time to get used to the new layout, get adjusted to it and then pass my judgement.
1. One of the first few things that jumps out to me is the black background they are using in all their pages. In general, text/content on black background just does not work for me. Dark background works well in many cases, as can be seen in the web images search of google images - specifically when you enlarge an image and black takes the center. Black background also works well when there is less text/written content on a page that just serves as a little footnote or side note to the larger image that makes up the bulk of the page - as in cnnsi.com's top images. However, when a large part of your page is just content, headlines, articles, scores - all readable content that the user is interested in, the black background just does not appeal to the user's eyes. Just look at how much easier it is to navigate through the website in the image below, compared to the new website (further below):
2. If you go to any page on Yahoo Sports and scroll down to the stories, there are sponsored ads that appear from time to time (I have highlighted one in red in the image above). I don't really have an issue with ads. As a user, I don't enjoy seeing them, but they are essential to the revenue stream for most commercial use websites. However, making them relevant to the user does do minimal damage to the user experience and in some cases, also enhances it - after all, personalized advertisement would lead users to click these ads right? Isn't that the user enhancing their own experience by checking out a new product? I suppose that can be debated, but I digress...
Either way, product placement is critical to the users actually finding these advertisements useful. How can a website find out more about their users? Well, they can monitor their internet surfing, their web searches to find out their interests and cater ads accordingly. An ad for the "Real Age Test" on the home page of Yahoo Sports shown above in red isn't really catering to my sports interests.
When I am visiting a sports website, I am really just thinking sports. Yahoo Sports infact knows my favorite teams as well! Advertising accordingly will make me take a second glance at that advertisement. Something completely unrelated to the content of the website, however, will not.
3. One last major thing I don't like about the Sports pages are the layout of the headlines and scores. This was something that bothered me a little even in the old format, and I thought it might be an improvement they would cover in the new layout. Check out the image below to see how the headlines, the articles, content are all displayed more heavily than the scoreboard itself.
The right side of the Yahoo Sports page (whether its the home page or something specific like NFL) contains top headlines regarding sports (or NFL if I'm on that page). Below the cover news, however, there are more headlines. And the cover news also circulates 4 top stories! That's a lot of headlines and stories hitting you as soon as you go to the site. However, if you want to take a look at the scores or the recap of the games from this week, you have to navigate down below the right side headlines and the ad that follows to see them. The scoreboard up top exists but it doesn't give me the analysis or recap of the game unless I go to the scoreboard below the articles on the right side of the page. The redundancy of articles really doesn't enhance the user experience as a lot of sports fans are going to the website to check the scores!
I haven't given up on Yahoo Sports as my primary sports website for all things related to sports yet. However, I do hope that Yahoo takes feedback from its users seriously and considers tweaking their layout a little (as I have heard similar complaints from many other users). The above are just my 2 cents on some of the improvements that can be made.
But the new layout of the Yahoo Sports page hasn't made me a happy camper. As a software engineer myself, I do realize user's tendencies to resist change - especially on websites they frequent. I remember whenever Facebook would go through a layout change, everyone would complain about how much Facebook sucked - on Facebook! I gave myself time to get used to the new layout, get adjusted to it and then pass my judgement.
1. One of the first few things that jumps out to me is the black background they are using in all their pages. In general, text/content on black background just does not work for me. Dark background works well in many cases, as can be seen in the web images search of google images - specifically when you enlarge an image and black takes the center. Black background also works well when there is less text/written content on a page that just serves as a little footnote or side note to the larger image that makes up the bulk of the page - as in cnnsi.com's top images. However, when a large part of your page is just content, headlines, articles, scores - all readable content that the user is interested in, the black background just does not appeal to the user's eyes. Just look at how much easier it is to navigate through the website in the image below, compared to the new website (further below):
2. If you go to any page on Yahoo Sports and scroll down to the stories, there are sponsored ads that appear from time to time (I have highlighted one in red in the image above). I don't really have an issue with ads. As a user, I don't enjoy seeing them, but they are essential to the revenue stream for most commercial use websites. However, making them relevant to the user does do minimal damage to the user experience and in some cases, also enhances it - after all, personalized advertisement would lead users to click these ads right? Isn't that the user enhancing their own experience by checking out a new product? I suppose that can be debated, but I digress...
Either way, product placement is critical to the users actually finding these advertisements useful. How can a website find out more about their users? Well, they can monitor their internet surfing, their web searches to find out their interests and cater ads accordingly. An ad for the "Real Age Test" on the home page of Yahoo Sports shown above in red isn't really catering to my sports interests.
When I am visiting a sports website, I am really just thinking sports. Yahoo Sports infact knows my favorite teams as well! Advertising accordingly will make me take a second glance at that advertisement. Something completely unrelated to the content of the website, however, will not.
3. One last major thing I don't like about the Sports pages are the layout of the headlines and scores. This was something that bothered me a little even in the old format, and I thought it might be an improvement they would cover in the new layout. Check out the image below to see how the headlines, the articles, content are all displayed more heavily than the scoreboard itself.
The right side of the Yahoo Sports page (whether its the home page or something specific like NFL) contains top headlines regarding sports (or NFL if I'm on that page). Below the cover news, however, there are more headlines. And the cover news also circulates 4 top stories! That's a lot of headlines and stories hitting you as soon as you go to the site. However, if you want to take a look at the scores or the recap of the games from this week, you have to navigate down below the right side headlines and the ad that follows to see them. The scoreboard up top exists but it doesn't give me the analysis or recap of the game unless I go to the scoreboard below the articles on the right side of the page. The redundancy of articles really doesn't enhance the user experience as a lot of sports fans are going to the website to check the scores!
I haven't given up on Yahoo Sports as my primary sports website for all things related to sports yet. However, I do hope that Yahoo takes feedback from its users seriously and considers tweaking their layout a little (as I have heard similar complaints from many other users). The above are just my 2 cents on some of the improvements that can be made.
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