New Homepage Feedback

[gurboura]

It looks more cluttered than the older one, it doesn't flow as well as the old one.

I like the news right in front of me, dead center. If I took the reigns on this, I probably would've made the "News" section 100% the width of the site, and given each article a preview or short description below it section. I also would've changed "Features" to have the same as news, give each featured article a short description.

Moved the Graphics module down to next to CPU, put "Storage" next to "Build your own" this way you have a nice uniform section for those, 3 rows of 3, not 1 row of 1, and then 4 rows of 2.

Put "Vendor Voice Stories" where "Topics" are, and remove "Topics"

 

[Guest]

It does, overall, seem a bit cluttered to me. I think that is due to the lack of white space and eye-catching features, as well as the fact that the headings for each section don't line up to give the page any sense of structure (the old page has mostly aligned section headings). It's a bit hard to know where to look. Often a home page has a single point where the viewer's initial attention is drawn and kept (a large image for example) for a time, but here everything is roughly the same size so nothing immediately stands out.

Upon landing on this page, one's eyes pass over the Latest News section to the Latest Articles section. The latter has images which more readily draw attention than text, and it is also the only section in the top half of the page with a grey background. Almost immediately after attention has been drawn to the articles, the Twitter feed scrolls, drawing attention to that instead. By now the reader's eyes are focused halfway down the page and lost in a sea of text and misaligned section headings.

EDIT: Oops, I had an ad blocker on. I had best talk about it without that on

What I said before about lack of section title alignment is still true. The entire page structure is almost random. However, I'll correct my statement about where attention is drawn. The large ad on the right side and the Latest Articles section draw the viewer's eyes from the beginning, meaning that they miss the News unless they backtrack to the other side of the page (and most people read LTR, not RTL). I would think that it would be better to draw the reader's attention on the left side and allow them to read naturally from LTR across the page.

This sums up my impression as well. It seems crowded, disjointed. The major articles are all now available via arrows, and only three are visible at a time, etc. Sometimes less is more. Remember the issues of bloatware which try to provide everything under the sun and as a result are actually worse to us than their simpler siblings.

In exchange, we are shown a number of other features such as forum updates and the like. I think that sort of feature should be for users who are logged in and can then set it in their preferences.

 

[Pixel13]

(a) [I'm a dinosaur] - make the Twitter go away, or make it optional. I don't want to see it. Keep it, and you lose me, likely.

(b) I agree that the new page is cluttered. It's also ugly.

(c) Proofing: yes, please do find a proofer. If I had the time, I'd volunteer.

(d) FIX what's broken before adding new crapola--you're not Microsoft, are you?

(d-1) Example: I've tried many times to activate an account using my primary email. It never works. Most of the time I get 'that email is taken' or similar--but earlier in the process there's no problem.

(d-2) How about fixing the 'thumbs up'/'thumbs down'? Even the Seattle newspaper's website manages that.

 

[wooodoggies]

I would like to see the page/article scroll buttons in the middle of the page and the catergoy button on the outside of the page.

 

[Guest]

In order to fix the cluttered feeling I would suggest making the Latest Articles section as long as the Latest News section. This could be done by making the Latest Articles section show the last 8 articles instead of the last 4 (a big break from tradition, right?). You'd probably have to make the Latest News section a bit longer to match perfectly up with that, but once that's done I think people would like it more.

Here's an explanation of why I suggested what I did.

I didn't suggest shortening the Latest News section because I know you guys sometimes release a lot of new articles at once, which would end up filling the entire shortened first page and bleeding into page 2 (that would be obviously bad).

I suggested displaying 8 standard size article links instead of just showing 4 super sized links because if you'd display 4, the images that go along with the articles would seem too small. So cleaning that up would be a messy affair that's unneeded considering the alternative, but you know that.

And yeah, showing the 8 Latest Articles would probably be a bit longer than the current Latest News section, so you'd have to lengthen it a bit. Lining up the bottom of the grey boxes (the one with All News on it/the news pages and the box containing Latest Articles) is very important to conveying a clean feeling!

This suggestion invariably has flaws in it, I admit that, so please be merciful.

 

[dbdarrough]

I agree with others that Tom's Hardware has become increasingly cluttered looking and hard to navigate over the years. Simply moving things around doesn't seem to help as it just takes time for everyone to learn where their favorite sections are now. Here are some ideas to make it a better looking, easier to navigate site.

1) The first 2-3 inches of every page is the Tom's Hardware logo, an ad, etc. Add to that many browsers have toolbars, etc. and the amount of space you see before you get to the meat of the page is greatly diminished requiring users to scroll just to see most of the main page. Think minimalist: Try to keep your main logo, heading, search and navigation bar small, especially when it is repeated on every page. I'm sure you could figure out a way to cut the size in half or more.

2) Whitespace: Tom's Hardware is a text intensive site, which is good, but you need to include more whitespace. A 3 column layout of mostly text, especially when it doesn't cover the whole screen because of ads on the sides may be pushing it too much. If nothing else, there needs to be more white space between columns and between sections.

3) Color to differentiate sections: Have you considered using colored backgrounds to differentiate different sections such as Latest News, Latest Articles, Charts, Forum Live Feed, etc. This kind of relates to whitespace. You want people to be able to easily navigate the page and find what they want. Right now, all headings are the same red type, all text is the same, etc. It is much hard to find something when everything looks the same and is only differentiated by the content. Colors and borders around different sections can make it easier to find favorite sections.

4) Ads: Yes I know this is how you guys make your money but come on! Tom's Hardware has become one of the most ad intensive sites I visit. There are ads within the page, ads along the sides of the page and sometimes even ads that pop up as I go from page to page in articles. That just plain sucks. And it comes across as greedy and not caring about your visitors. Can you try to limit your ads to certain areas on the page, such as along the right side, etc. and definitely DON'T EVER HAVE A FULL PAGE AD POP UP while using your site. That almosts makes me want to stop coming to Tom's Hardware.

I like Tom's Hardware and the articles and content but overall the site design sucks. Hire someone who knows about good design techniques and then implement them.

 

[jsc]

Prefer the current layout.

 

[TheWhiteRose000]

one word, fail.
I like the older look.

 

[dbdarrough]

I just went back and forth between the old and new version and I MUCH prefer the old version for some of the reasons I stated above. It has more whitespace, sections are differentiated by boxes, you can see more new articles, topics, etc. in the old version and like others have said, the new version seems like a mashup whereas the old version columns seem cleaner and easier to read.

Maybe just make the old version header stuff smaller by half and solve some of the ad problems I mentioned above and I would consider those changes an improvement. The new versions is definitely NOT an improvement.

 

[ChiefTexas_82]

I took web design in High school. Looking at the new webpage it seems that while the old webpage featured the news as the first thing a visitor would see, the new one has the latest articles front and center. Actually, if people look at webpages the way I learned in high school, then the new webpage has the news in the last place people would look before scrolling.

The way I learned that most people browse webpages is that they start in the center and then look top, top right, right, bottom right, bottom, bottom left, left, top left.

Looking at the new webpage it's interesting to see which parts of the website y'all are focusing on. Since I like to see the news first, though, I will be sticking to the old one. Now if news was center again and the features were strait to the right... that would be about perfect for me since they are my most used links before I hit the forums.

 

[koga73]

change for the sake of change

 

[docgregt]

I like the old one better. I like the news feed in the middle and the feature articles on the left which I rarely read. I can't stand the forum live feed on a page that I come to to read news about the industry. Overall the older site was cleaner and better organized. Who cares about a live twitter feed anyway?

 

[nadavp3]

well... to be honest, while .. refreshing old things is a good idea.. there's a saying that gose "if it aint broken, don't fix it" or so, case in point, you haven't out done the old design as of yet: at the moment the old design offer more content at the view-able area of the screen, so my vote would go for the old design, but that is not to say that the old design is as good as it could every possibly get or that its perfect, all it says is that this beta is far from due and that theres more work to be done, i wish i could give you my vision of perfect version of your website but unfurntly i am no website designer, i am just a website user, what i can tell you is that you surly can do better then this, and that i hope you either will or will stick to the old.


so keep working on it, thumbs up for the effort so far, but, don't stay with the new design as it, needs more rethinking.

oh and was it my visiting you 5-10 times\day that made me get here =p ?

+ RSS feed is the best thing ever.. up until you get to the point it just wont refresh as fast as you would like (how about.. push? live rss feed? something?.. i burn your lots of bandwidth going back and forth checking if the site is updated =p)


what i use most in your website is the news
after that theres the articles that you do
then theres the reviews
and last theres the chart which is once in a million but .. when time comes its mighty impotent and usefall

if there was a way to keep updated with the latest articles\reviews\news in a more efficient way.. i would love it

 

[Guest]

I think you need a fresh new design. This isn't look new...

 

[PropagandaHour]

In depth: I think it looks bad, but better than it did before. One of the worst problems of this site is that there is so much unused space and that the formatted boxes are all different vertical sizes and none of them line up. It was bad in the previous version and it's bad in this version. The only interesting thing in this version is the advent of the Latest Articles box, that, while interesting, still looks terrible and provides more information than people will take advantage of at first glance. Make that box fill the page horizontally and make it twice as long vertically so you can have maybe 10 things on it at a time, and make that categories drop list more noticeable, like make it a complete bar at either the bottom or top so people actually use it.

The Forum Live Feed is terrible and serves no purpose. If someone is going to be reading your forum they will adventure onto it by themselves and not be enticed there by "new comp, need help from u"/"hot rig 4 sale, 800$$$$" or other equally terrible posts by worthless posters. The front page should be about putting this website's best foot forward and bringing in traffic to the main articles, not for bringing more terrible voices into a discussion of blue versus red LEDs on my fans.

There are literally five things on the top and center that do the exact same thing: the follow/RSS/twitter/weekly digest buttons. Please remove most of them, preferably all of the ones on the main page because that area is, again, supposed to be used for articles and what-not. Again, best foot forward; not "please follow this website, hey are you following us? Because you should follow us, etc etc etc."

There are like 6 different font sizes, colors, and types on the front page. E-gads man, consistency. This is supposed to be a unified website and it looks worse than the drudge report. On that note, every single box is a different size and nothing is aligned at all.

The top boilerplate has it's own ridiculous set of problems (I think everyone at this point knows that clicking on the site's icon brings you to home, no need for a standalone button), but since it has survived through this rebuild I'm guessing it won't be getting changes either way.

I love this website, but man you need to look at some other websites for inspiration and not just throw up a bunch of scrolling text boxes on a screen and call it good. I'm attaching three images to this post:

This is how the old site looks with a bunch of terrible boxes that are all different sizes and alignments.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/215/oldtomshardware.gif/

This is how the new version looks with a bunch of terrible boxes that are all different sizes and alignments, except with a brand new horizontal box that gives the whole site a off balance lean.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/64/newtomshardware.gif/

This is a mockup of the website that is so basic that my head is beginning to hurt! You probably won't click this, whatever. Just try to be more consistent (in text and alignments) and centered with your design.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/820/terriblemockupofth.gif/

 

[arael]

Prefer the old style much more.
New style looks way too messy.

 

[Tsn4help]

The new design seems more organized. Like it.

 

[jpishgar]

Very much appreciating the honest feedback, friends. Please remember to keep your comments and criticism constructive.

How about fixing the 'thumbs up'/'thumbs down'? Even the Seattle newspaper's website manages that.

That's actually being worked on right now, hoping to have a solution soon. Let's keep to the new site design as the topic though.

 

[quixoticism]

I don't like it very much.

The column with news and the forum life feed should be on the right side of the page and not as wide.

I come to see the featured articles and so I think they need to be given more prominence. Having them on the left center(instead of right center) and the field being wide enough to spot 5 articles instead of 4 would really enhance the feel of it.

The design for the forum live feed feels like it's wasting a ton of space. I do like this addition though. Cut the row depth in half and the button size to match and it would look much better and more crisp. The twitter feed also suffers from the same thing. It is too big.(also I am not a twitter fan so that's twice the dislike for it)

It feels like the emphasis is on the news, forum, and twitter stuff. Those areas are bloated and take up more space than they should which takes away from the page presence of all the articles which is the main reason why I visit tomshardware.

The "Follow Us" section should be removed as it is. It's way to large. The contents in it are already at the top of the page so just make that spot more pronounced(making them a little bigger and more clearly defined/described)

There's much less content on the front page(likely that not everything has been moved over) but there is also less room because of the bulkiness that I've already addressed.

I think there is good potential in the redesign but as it stands it fails to improve on what we already have.

 

[randomizer]

It's not bad. But my question is: when will we have websites optimized for widescreen monitors? It's 2011, most people have widescreen monitors, there's no point making narrow websites where you need to abuse the scroll wheel to explore it.

Why does a website need to be wide? A wide website that doesn't scale well to a narrower browser window is actually a bad thing. A browser shouldn't need to be maximised in order to view a site. Maximised windows are, in general, inefficient hogs of screen real estate.

 

[Noworldorder]

The beta is much more organized; we needed that! I will make it my regular bookmark.
Only suggestion: the Twitter feed is much larger than needed. 2 lines would be fine, but in a different color typeface - or bold.
The extra space can be made into a learning center link - Lord knows we need one!

 

[ravenlord]

i like the new design... it is modern and well thought out...
relevancy is most important to me and as long as I can read the latest and greatest in a nice clean format with easy access to additional content, i am happy.

 

[irkusk]

It feels like a more condensed version of the site, so you have to scroll/load less to find a category, but then are more likely to have to click through some pages to see more. I'd personally like to see a widescreen-friendly version, as both setups only use about 5/8ths of my width...

 

[jimmysmitty]

Good point Reynod... We need a "Get to know your Tom's Team Member" box or a "Tom's Moderator Hunk of the Month" section & I want to be August

I plan to take May then

As for the site, the layout is better. Well looks better to me. But what I want to know is how well it works with IE9. There are a few issues with IE9 and the site worked better wth IE8, which is strange since IE8 sucked compared to IE9. Such as comments. Sometimes it works, like quoting and posting the comment, and sometimes it needs to have the compatability turned on. Then sometimes even that wont make it work. Might be a java script error since in the lower left of IE9 is has a "javascript void" tag when I hover over the "Post Comment" button.

I also would like to see a bit better design. Maybe take advantage of some HTML5 or CSS3 so we can put the newest browsers to work, like IE9/FF4.

 

[Yrusoad]

I really like it. The shuffled design doesnt fix what wasnt broken. It is slow to scroll on my new MBP, hope that's fixed.