It is time to redesign your newsroom website - today and now

when was the last time, you redesign your news organization website ?

what factors did you consider in the redesigning process

1. What is the benchmark for a successful redesign ?

2. What elements did you decide to keep and what did you let go?

3. What time table ?

4. Re -branding issues ?

5. Why redesign ?

6. Who should be involved in redesign ? and what is the place of your audience

7. What are the do's and dont's

Two leading news organization have re-designed recently

- BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2008/03/refreshing_changes.html
- Recently, www.economist.com

see the story below

It is time to let go of your beautiful website and redesign it as a pretty futuristic website

let us know about your website re-design plans

bye for now

Editor
PenPlusBytes






Today we launch a redesigned home-page for Economist.com. Those of you who were familiar with (and even fond of) the previous version will naturally wonder: why the change? We wanted to do three main things—make the page simpler, deeper and more enjoyable for the reader.

First, simplicity. The new page is far shorter than the old one. We have cut clutter (always something The Economist likes to do). There are fewer advertisements. The page is cleaner, with images that stand out more clearly to flag featured content.

We have removed long lists of articles and replaced them with a pithier selection. The navigation that runs down the left-hand side of the page, and throughout the site, is now completely visible right away, with no need to scroll down "below the fold". By rolling your cursor over the main categories of content you can reveal more detailed sub-categories.

A second aim was to make more content readily accessible—strange as it may sound, to combine greater simplicity with greater depth. At the top, four main items of content rotate before settling on the lead story. You can readily scroll through all the columns. There is more breathing room for our blogs. Articles from the print edition are easy to find via the cover image.

A new feature brings to the fore the articles that have proved most popular with readers. You can choose between three different measures of this: the articles that have attracted the most comments, the ones that readers have recommended the most (by clicking on the "recommend" button next to the text) and those that have been most read. So you get to influence what appears on the home-page.

That is part of our third aim: to make the page a more enjoyable experience. It shows not just what we select, but what readers are finding most interesting. Readers can also switch the top story by scrolling over the four main features. The page will be "alive" in other ways, too, changing throughout the day, so it will be worth returning to more often.

There is one other novelty to mention. We have introduced an area where you can learn about events and special promotions from The Economist. We hope you find this useful.

Indeed, we hope you find the new home-page as a whole a big improvement. But change is not always welcome, and we won't have got everything right in one go. So we'd welcome your views, negative as well as positive. You can submit these, anonymously and without logging in, using our site feedback form.

http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=11355660