The new bakersield.com homepage is wider, has more ad positions and focuses more on non-news contentWe launched a redesign of bakersfield.com's homepage today, laying the foundation for greater changes sitewide in the coming months.
I've posted a separate work blog post detailing the changes that is receiving generally good response. But here's a quick overview:
- Goals were to clean up a cluttered design that had been patched way too many times, make more money and do more to promote other sites in The Bakersfield.com Network.
- Add more "white space."
- The content mix is powered by a library of "drag and drop" widgets that can be adjusted on the fly or set to automated dayparts. I've been through a few redesigns in the past, and the second we launched, fixed code meant the design was obsolete within seconds. The beauty of drag and drop is we can quickly make changes, whether to match reader interests or to reflect a huge local story that demands a single-story focus.
- More ad positions. We were turning away money with our old design, so we added another leaderboard, a skyscraper and three smaller banners to meet demand. We're swimming in house and remnant ads as a result of the changes, but we expect to sell that inventory quickly.
- A "carousel" that highlights our growing Bakersfield.com Network of local sites. We still have to add widgets for key sites that include Bakotopia, Bakersfield Life and Northwest Voice, but what we have live now gives you a peek peak at our family of sites.
- Feeds highlighting key classified categories. Classifieds generate huge traffic but newspapers don't do a good job of highlighting those deals and treating the content with a sense of serendipity.
- Improved customer-service information.
As I noted on BdotCOM, we'll still be adding a few features and making tweaks in the coming days and weeks.
Next up after the homepage work are a variety of new designs during the first half of 2011, culminating in an entirely new news site that's will feature some different approaches to local news online.
Stay tuned.