The verdict is still up in the air,  but with a major site re-design you want two things, keep the existing customer base happy and improve functionality to grab new audiences. I think this site update comes off heavy handed and focused on adding functionality. But adding functionality at the sacrifice to usability and readability. It’s not that the site is redesigned poorly because it isn’t. It’s that the architecture leaves you looking at equally weighted items on a dark red page with navigation that is hard to look at.  And the old site albeit was busy and tired looking it was easier on the eye. Their was something so pleasant about the last cnn.com update that I am almost happy that new user interface is harder to look at as it was designed so well prior that it was addictive to look at. I think that plus the fact that the new site design has a very dark title/image/video focused site that really doesn’t do justice to writing or reporting but more towards it’s video and image related content.

And so CNN Red 2.0 is here:

It’s de-centralized, there’s less of a focus on the sections for content at a cost to delivering you the most up-to date stories/videos. The entire navigation top line bar is harder to navigate and read, theirs a missing vertical coloumn navigation which also works to remove the prior subsite focus on sections. I feel like the focus is heavily on video content now,  and it’s apparent that they want you to watch what they want rather than giving you the options to pick your own direction. The Newspulse area all with this social media stuff takes up a large foot print as well, in my opinion. Maybe it’s over kill with its prominence on the page. and last but not least its so much taller now it’s almost silly. I mean I get trying to go after SEO but at the cost of annoying your user-base come on that looks like a mistake.

I give it a C not for it’s aesthetics but for it’s strategic layout and it’s color palette. It’s focus changed but it didn’t work hard enough to retain it’s existing user-base. And most importantly it’s too hard to look at and navigate. But I give them credit on their Video section of their site. And it’s clear that they made the judgement that the video feature was the area to spend the most time on updating.

What are your thoughts?

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