ESPN Web Site Redesign
I've been looking over the ESPN site redesign today. I managed to find a screenshot of the previous version of the home page to compare the new design against:
Old Site
Old ESPN home page
New Site
Redesigned ESPN home page
ESPN have included a page detailing the new features of the redesign, although at first glance you'd be forgiven for thinking that its main goal was to provide more ad space.
Judging from the overwhelmingly negative feedback — 500 comments and counting — the new design is taking some getting used to.
Then again, unless the existing site is pretty broken, redesigns tend to be fairly unpopular.
I also remember wishing that Facebook would go back to its old layout when it redesigned last year. Now, of course, I'm familiar with the new design and I can't even remember what the old design looked like.
Thanks to Mike Davidson for a balanced post on the redesign, which sums up some of its pros and cons and also the issues the designers faced.
Many of the comments about the redesign revolve around the site being slow to load, the flyout navigation getting in the way, and content being hard to find.
I am not a user of the ESPN site, but visually it doesn't feel like much of an improvement. Certainly, it's not a huge leap forward in terms of modernizing the design.
Looking at the redesign solely from a visual standpoint, one issue may be that the background image clashes with the colors of the advertising, making the home page feel more cluttered and messy.
If you're going to have a lot of colorful advertising on your site you really need the color scheme of the site to not compete with your advertising.
To that end, ESPN may be better off with a much plainer design. As a quick test, here's how the site looks with no background image:
New ESPN home page with no background
To me, it already feels a little cleaner and more cohesive, although of course it doesn't fix any structural or content issues that exist and that your users are really going to care about.
Either way, the ESPN team have a way to go to match the likes of SI.com which manages to have a clean, uncluttered layout while at the same time presenting a ton of information on the home page.
Posted on: January 8, 2009 | 10 Comments
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10 Comments Posted
As a long time ESPN visitor I have to say I haven't been impressed with this at all. Designers like you and Mike tend to look at it as if it's a flower, judging the colors and spacing. What is failed to realize is the user experience navigating around the site. From their frontpage you can now no longer get to any sport scoreboard in one click. You now have to navigate through the individual sport index pages and find the scoreboard link (which is in different places with inconsistent names). This is VERY user UNfriendly. Likewise the link back to their frontpage is only found in a small 8 pixel text link in the breadcrumb. It's as if they don't want you to navigate the sports sections - rather only to their top level items such as Columnists, Page 2, Fantasy, Video, Sportsnation and something called "The Life". All blatant self-promotion. This - and the obtrusive ads - are my main complaints (though FF AdBlocker Plus works well) as is why - as you said - they have a lot of work to catch up with SI.com.
1. Posted by Luke K. on January 09, 2009
Luke — you're absolutely right. Because I'm not a user of the site I can't really comment on how well it works in terms of finding and presenting information.
I can make some educated guesses, but it's only people like yourself who can really say if the site works or not.
That's why I restricted my comments to the visuals, which I feel I can comment on.
Interestingly enough, you can actually get back to the home page by clicking on the logo. However, because it's presented as part of the background image I'm not surprised you didn't pick up on that.
2. Posted by Christian Watson on January 09, 2009
I am not a user of the ESPN site, but it's not a huge leap forward in terms of modernizing the design.
3. Posted by Palak Bhatt on January 12, 2009
Slightly off-topic: I am a user of espn.com -- mostly through RSS however. Imagine my surprise when I checked the espn.com college football feed and saw this:
ESPN.com has launched many new college football widgets that offer scores, stats, and news
Double-clicking the feed link takes me here:
http://widgetcenter.espn.go.com/widgets/tags/College%20Football
... which is a "widget center" for plugins to Google, MySpace, Facebook, etc... and maybe I'm missing something but they've completely eliminated their RSS feed. Why? I imagine thousands of RSS users are frustrated like me. I also hate the new ad-friendly site.
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"
4. Posted by Ben on January 12, 2009
I am (was) an avid visitor of ESPN.com before the redesign. At first blush I wondered what happened to all of their coverage of sports like tennis, boxing, NASCAR, etc, as it has become much harder to locate.
That is the least of my worries, it seems. ESPN.com has had page load errors for the past 10 days for not only me but also several other friends and co-workers. I've been forced to find other sources of imformation as a result. If I find a comprehensive site I like, I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever return to ESPN.com...
5. Posted by ESPN user on January 13, 2009
I was a consistent user of espn.com. Now their site is so slow and more difficult to navigate that I dread going there. I usually go to check out the NHL but I am tired of trying to load pages that take, what seems like, minutes to load, if they load at all. I can go to si.com or yahoo and get much quicker and easier to navigate pages. Espn screwed the pooch on this one. Tried to fix something that was not broke and in the process screwed it up.
6. Posted by Cory on January 15, 2009
There was a great article on the venturebeat website about the new site design for ESPN. They probably did the website redesign in-house and may not have done user testing and user feedback.
7. Posted by Boston Web Design on January 18, 2009
Here's a link to the VentureBeat article. Fortunately, ESPN has removed one of the main complaints — the reall intrusive advertising. So, maybe things are looking up.
8. Posted by Christian Watson on January 27, 2009
I am not a user of ESPN but as a suggestion i tell if you redesign of your site then it may be your site go down. and also your new look of site is best as compare to old site.
9. Posted by Web design company on February 04, 2009
ESPN the website sucks! The new drop down login menu freezes up on FireFox, IE and even AOL's browser.
With the NCAA Mens Basketball Tourney contest in full swing, they can't handle the traffic.
To much visual crap on that website that takes forever to download. It's sports for cryin' out loud, not a Salvador Dali painting! They need to trim all that visual junk that is muckin' up their website!
10. Posted by Crank on April 05, 2009