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

Break it down

[Siberwulf]

I want the ability to drag and drop various parts of the site how I want it to look (similar to google custom homepage, which I love).

I also want to add custom feeds and have a lot of options to choose from.

Did I mention let me customize it how i want?

Slippery Slope.

[Anonymous Coward]

""The BBC is asking people to redesign their homepage [CC] [MD], with the best design winning an Apple laptop. "

Dammit Taco! Look what you started. :)

Portal

[Baricom]

The ideal news site for me would have the following four features:

1. Unobtrusive advertising.
1a. No "free registration" nag.
2. Higher quality pictures and videos (in terms of size and resolution, not necessarily content).
3. Open ended syndication - let your visitors set up your home page to show not only your news, but those of your competitors, if they choose to do so. Let them drag boxes around the page, and provide an API to get modules on your page. (RSS or Atom with support for headline images as enclosures would fit the bill nicely.)

I currently get my news from three places: My Yahoo!, Netvibes (when I get comfortable enough about their privacy practices, it'll be my new home page), and Google News. The thing they have in common is the ability to do massive customization of their home page.

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.

Someone will say it....

[XBL]

Porn! It would fit well into the BBC website main page. Please no British chicks...

Re:Someone will say it....

[booch]

I think a Page 3 Girl would be more appropriate. And British women would be fine. There are plenty of hot British women; see the list in the Wikipedia article. Or go to Page3.com.

What Do You Want on a News Website?

[TubeSteak]

Stuff That Matters

Duh

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.

Re:I want news

[Ohreally_factor]

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

If you don't like slashdot, why not just come out and say it?

Re:800x600 still relatively popular.

[great throwdini]

For a website that is aimed at non-technical users, it's probably too early to ignore 800x600 usability.

...or those who are running at higher resolutions, but prefer not to full-screen browser sessions. Those types always seem to be overlooked when people start to throw about statistics of this sort.

Save the text!

[spongebue]

When I go on CNN, it drives me nuts that the stories I really want to see are usually in video format only. Normally I cannot watch them, usually due to video player problems (in Linux or OS X). Not to mention that there is still a significant number of people on dial-up. Ideally, both video and text would be offered, even if text is verbatim of the video.

Also, it would be cool if there was some kind of "stories you may like" feature made, that pulls together some keywords. So if you tend to read stories about gas prices, and there is a story about record breaking oil costs, it would go on some kind of separate personalized list. Just a thought.

Most if the time;

[Ajehals]

I just want impartial unbiased honest factual relevant interesting up to date reporting to empower me to make my own decisions and take any relevant action I deem necessary....

But occasionally I want opinionated sensationalist one sided reporting with a large dose of tongue in cheek humour and honest to god trolling (then I go to /. :) )

Oh and when I want to know what's happening in United States of America and need a good laugh I check out FOX.

Just one thing

[Phreakiture]

There is one thing I want more than anything else in a news site. If a news article is about a legislative action, then I want bill numbers, amendment numbers and a sidebar that shows me who voted how. That way, I can pick up the phone as soon as I have read the article, without spending two hours trawling through the house/senate web sites looking for the info, and call my elected representatives to either thank them or to tell them they are sons of bitches.

Project Vote-smart is a good step in the right direction, but the database is indexed the wrong way and doesn't touch committees at all. Besides, it isn't a news site. I want it integrated into a news site.

That alone will probably get my undying loyalty.