BBC to relaunch news site next week
Posted by Bill Gaffney | March 29th, 2008Looking to unveil its new design early next week, the new BBC News website will include wider pages, bigger images and a pan-BBC masthead according to editor Steve Herrmann. This is an exciting relaunch that I’ve been awaiting since the beta release of the new BBC homepage was announced which was certainly more than simply a lick of paint.
The most exciting change for this fanatical LINUX user is the use of of Flash embedded video rather than the Real or Windows Media format pop-up windows. This has already been rolled out with success (example). As the industry shifts its metric’s standard from pageview to time-on-site, changes like this will yield tremendous dividends.
Early signs suggest that on those stories where we’ve embedded the video in a story, as opposed to providing the link to a pop-up player as we’ve done up to now, the video gets about ten times more usage than before. So it looks like it’s working well so far. (Steve Herrmann)
To move away from the five-year-old, oppressively blue design is an absolute no-brainer. This move to a cleaner, more open layout from the beta release has proven to be more easily readable, and it appears that the BBC truly is looking and listening to its readers to lead the way to its new iteration.
[...] Bill Gaffney wrote an interesting post today on BBC to relaunch news site next weekHere’s a quick excerptLooking to unveil its new design early next week, the new BBC News website will include wider pages, bigger images and a pan-BBC masthead according to editor Steve Herrmann. This is an exciting relaunch that I’ve been awaiting since the … [...]