A Web Design Critique of the Newsweek Redesign

In what may become a regular feature on this blog, some free web design advice for Newsweek on their newly redesigned site front page.

Published May 18, 2009

Written by Joey

Photography introduced me to the 'new media' evolution. I currently do community management at Meraki in San Francisco, but this blog is about journalism, some UX design, and the occasional rant. more →

@joeybaker | joey@byjoeybaker.com

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Newsweek’s redesign/relaunch today revealed a much cleaner, more web friendly site. Many improvements have been made, and you can tell that they’re thinking hard. However, there’s still room to improve. The essential problem with the site is that it still feel liks a newspaper site, not a online newsorg. Check out the embedded PDF for a look at the annotated homepage of the site and a few quick, overall notes below.

The design is nice and clean with a solid red motif, but the widgets are sorta hard to tell apart, they don’t really have a bottom.
I know that Newsweek is a partner of MSNBC, but promoting that connection so heavily may not be so smart. MSNBC should get equal billing (see: Slate and WaPo), or be totally integrated.
The choice to push the blogs so heavily is interesting (They have a widget and a nav bar). Not bad, just interesting. I’m curious to know if that works out.
Serious Fun is all kinds of UI hell. The side arrows to mean neutral is just down right confusing , and it’s got very prominent placement on the F pattern of user reading. I’m all down for turning polls into something more of a game, but rethink the UI here.
Props for having links to other newsorgs. That’s a valuable service that Newsweek is developing. The fact that you get to the other site through a frame is, again, interesting. Cheers to experimentation.

Newsweek Homepage Critique

Publish at Scribd

A few css issues on the new redesign. I recommend: max-width :)

Update

Looks like there are still some css issues to be worked out too. This is a close up of the top slider section.

Update2

Looks like the content of the change isn’t that great either.

http://www.AccessibleComputing.com/ Hade

When running a shopping business, it helps to have an online website. This would help promote your site to other people. This website would help increase your sales because people nowadays are dependent on online shopping.
CCrew

Shame the critique starts off with how Newsweek is a part of MSNBC. Especially when Newsweek is a part of the Washington Post.

Kinda takes away any credence of what “you know”
http://byjoeybaker.com Joey Baker

Wow. I'm not sure what I was thinking. You are of course correct, they only have a partnership. I've corrected the copy – many thanks.
daleclara

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daleclara

web design
If you have decided that you need a good website for your business, the next step is to decide who should create it. This decision is one that needs a lot of attention because if on the one hand, a well-organized and attractive web design can help you tremendously in making more money; on the other hand, a poorly designed website can cost you money, drive away customers, and can hurt your company reputation. Following are the few basic steps you need to keep in mind, while choosing a Web Design Company
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Yes you are right but I know that there are poor designed sites that make a boom when it comes to their sales, very few only :).Anyway, if a company or a business its really important that the website is clean and well manage. Make an investment to hire someone that can do a really good web design. Nowadays a lot of web designers know what they are doing and they are really creative when it comes to design but due to the greedy minds for money, usually some of them, don't do their job well and keep asking for money. One more thing I can add to that, the owner of a specific business or company site must have a consultant or inspector to see how is it going in the work of the web designer.
http://www.rsanow.com.au RSA Online

A lot of people loves to criticize right, on people, on a product and now even in a website. This is not a strange issue already because all of us have the free will to say our taughts and ideas. Well for me, in such a big company or business which is being establish or soon to be establish, if they plan on having a website with them, it must be professionally made and don't hesitate to do an investment on that site you want to be made so that it will be on a good on going process.
http://www.icusa.net/web-design.htm Naples Website Design

It seems that there are lots of improvement already in the design of the Newsweek site. I know those css issues can be fixed as soon as possible because I notice that it’s only a minor problem.