Sour Alba

As I may have mentioned, my former project has undergone a redesign. I’ve been monitoring user responses to this via the comments on scotsman.com stories. Judging by the remarks on this story, the new design is not getting an enthusiastic reception. Here’s a sample of comments (remember, people who regularly comment on a site’s stories tend to be its core readership):

• More people are concerned about the dreadful new layout of the posting page than are able to comment on the story. Scotsman, this is your worst idea yet.
• What a joke! Newsquest will be falling about.the old format was much better, this change in not good at all
• It’s a bit mince n’est pas?
• I will report this site as unsuitable.
• I happen to know that Johnston Press got rid of the team behind the old Scotsman website. Not without a fight.
• I think we shoudl e-mail the Scotsman. Their site used to be the best among UK papers for usability, comment and ease of reading - this is now very poor, and worse than the Herald.
• I think this is knackered already lol
• I’m gone. This is unusable.
• SCOTSMAN ARE YOU LISTENING? THIS IS TERRIBLE AND YOU WILL LOSE ALL YOUR POSTERS IF YOU DON’T GO BACK TO THE WAY IT WAS. PLEASE!
• Oh, this site is just the worst now.

For me the most damning comment was this: “With the Herald you can at least see what you have written and use bold and italics.” The Herald website, which for so long lagged behind as an object of derision and pity, is now favourably compared to the dear old Hootsmon.

UPDATE

Yet more negative feedback in this piece entitled “New look for Scotsman’s leading website“. Here’s a flavour of the 46 responses:

• This is appallingly bad, the old design was a little dated perhaps, but much better than this. I thought we left behind this ‘my first homepage’ aesthetic with Netscape Navigator and dial up modems. Why does Johnson Press seem so concerted to make The Scotsman into little more than a regional newspaper of little importance?
• Not only are there still glitches in this new setup, but it is, to say the least, appalling. It is badly organised and quite feeble in comparison to the original. Did the Editor’s kids design it themselves, ot was it a school project?
• I’ll post as usual … but I don’t like this set-up. Not a bit of it! It’s now a generic newspaper look. How uniquely Scottish is that? Bad move Hootsmon … Your advisers want shot!!!
• Sorry, but I don’t like it very much; it’s almost identical to that of the Montrose Review, Brechin Advertiser and all the little locals which are printed by Johnson Press…adequate but not sufficient for a broadsheet such as The Scotsman…
• This website is awful. I suppose the new dreadful look matches the new dreadful standards of journalism under Johnston Press.

Ouch.

UPDATE II

Mad propz to allmediascotland.com for spotting yet more disgruntlement in this Edinburgh Evening News story. Here are some further highlights:

• This took “several months of preparation and planning”? Looks more like an afternoon’s work by a couple of drunk toddlers.
• As a web designer and project manager with around 12 years experience working with some of the largest blue chip companies in the UK I would give this effort 2 out of 10 (well at least it loads!)
• All three Scotsman publications online have glittered in a galaxy dominated by website giants such as BBC News , Guardian Unlimited and the New York Times - to cite just three worthy examples.The cliche that now leaps to mind is: “If it aint broke,why fix it”?
• This “new look” is an embarrassing step backwards. The old Scotsman websites had a simple and effective style. Quite classy almost. This new version is something else. I wonder if the design remit went like this:
  “Let’s implement something that looks like tawdry p!sh, indistinguishable from all the dross that’s out there. We want to run the Scotsman into the ground”.
  
• This new dub dub dub is shocking. Sack the person responsible. I would love to have some Evening News journalist contact me. I’d give them a piece of my mind, lets face it they cannot spell, thay have no proper grasp of grammar and they display an appaling lack of sense. Morevover where are all my letters going as I type them. I wondered if there was something amiss with my set at this end. Perhaps it is the ‘improvements’ made by the Johnson Pres people. Bring it on schoolboys, we fought a war that you might print your drivel. Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas indeed. God bless us one and all.

After years of being dreadful, Scotland’s Daily Record has had a much-needed redesign.

My first impression is that the Record now has most of the features a half-decent news site needs but in the wrong places.

Essentially, the Record team have missed the secret truth: only the article page matters. If you have cool ideas, put them there.

Their homepage is a great improvement. But the homepage is relatively unimportant.

In terms of traffic, the article pages are where the action is. And I have to say they’ve ticked some impressive boxes there: rating articles; using tags (AKA themes or topics); lists of related articles; and links to Digg and Delicious at the end of articles (the average Record user will never bother with these but they are a clever way of boosting traffic and search engine ranking).

They’ve missed some key tricks, though. The big one is having comments on each story. Instead, they’ve gone for a very patchy approach with this only being offered on a few. (Unbelievably there is no opportunity to comment on Jim Traynor’s football column. Given that he hosts a BBC phone-in, that’s an odd decision) Now, this may be a trial phase but this feature is an industry standard and a very effective way of multiplying traffic and tying in readers - if used extensively.

Instead, the Record are pushing forums (or fora, if we’re being pedantic). The ones I checked made the Marie Celeste look crowded.

Also, their use of tags is cursory. To maximise the number of people reading each article, stories should have multiple tags, not one or two.

Another flaw: their use of puffs to promote other content through the site is poor. Also, the stories themselves are very flat, with no use of bold or itals to lift them. There appear to be few pictures or videos to lift the text.

Finally, they have some brilliant features like lists of “most read” or “most emailed” stories but have hidden them very well in section pages. These should be prominent items on the article page.

(On a positive note: thumbs up to my pal John McKie for name-checking me in his column on the Georgia v Scotland debacle:

My Hibee mate Stewart texted me midway through: “If you dress like Jambos, you play like Jambos.”

Fame at last.)