A couple thoughts on the CNN.com redesign by Huge:
- 1. There’s no 728 leaderboard. A full width expandable unit and box ad in the c-col are the main ad units above the page fold on the homepage. This is not surprising considering I’ve been hearing for years that leaderboard ads don’t perform well and this new combo seems to be the “Apple”-friendly ad package
- 2. The beautiful simplicity of the header, particularly the breathing room around logo and the treatment of headers on section fronts, really strengthens the brand
- 3. The new grid is nice and much stronger than the old grid
- 4. As many have pointed out, the “latest headlines,” are now somewhat buried—one of the things the old CNN had going for it was the latest headlines were always clear
- 5. The play icon overlay treatment on the lead video on the homepage makes the whole thing look like an ad
- 6. The consistency of design treatment even in the show promos near the bottom of the page is impressive
- 7. I can see how the arrow icons next to “Money” and “Sports” in the main nav can be confusing to people, although I will say that when I first noticed them I assumed from their placement and treatment that they were partner/sister sites
- 8. The fact that NewsPulse doesn’t remember your filtering preferences when you revisit the page kind of defeats the purpose of personalization. It’s also a lot more interesting when you change the dropdown on the top right to 15 minutes (otherwise it doesn’t offer much more than a most popular box on the homepage)
- 9. http://www.cnn.com/video/ is the same experience. Can’t wait to see what they’re planning for the next iteration of this section.
- 10. The CNN Challenge, an interactive video quiz with CNN anchors, is incredibly well executed. All the details are in place (e.g. flashy motion graphics intro with sound, a leaderboard, score tracking, interesting variation in questions and question formats, compelling transitions between states of the application, etc.)
