What Do You Want on a News Website?

SomethingBig asks: "The BBC is asking people to redesign their homepage, with the best design winning an Apple laptop. With news websites becoming ever more crowded and cluttered, what is really the most important information for a news organization's homepage? Should it contain local news? Traffic? Weather? What type of information would you want on the BBC's homepage (or CNN's if you're in America)?"

Comments

What would I want?

[grogdamighty]

"Should it contain local news? Traffic? Weather? What type of information would you want on the BBC's homepage (or CNN's if you're in America)?"

I'm not a coder or in web design, so I can't tell you how to make a simple but elegant interface. I can tell you what should be readily apparent to anyone asked these questions: I want exactly what I want, when I want it. That's what I like about Google News - if I want sports news on top, that's where I put it; if I want a custom search for all new pharmaceuticals, I can do it. Major news websites should take note that people want to be able to decide what news they see.

There's a reason why most people flip directly to a specific section of the newspaper. It's time the newspaper flipped for us.

Less bloat

[iriefrank]

I load and reload news sites hundreds of times a day. Strip the bloat out, and let me do it quickly. The new NYT layout is fine as layout goes (though I still like the old site better) but all the Flash and proliferation of tables upon tables makes the site load at a crawl.

In short: strip Flash out. Video in links only. Make it snappy.

I want news

[Johnso]

I want news, not sensationalism. Drop the misleading headlines and transparent opinion pieces.

I read the news to make my decisions, not to have them made for me.