News Sites Need To Go On Diets

By: Steve Outing Washingtonpost.com, which in recent years has consistently won top awards in major competitions for online news sites, on a recent day had:

* 217 links (including 42 article headlines and 52 section headings)
* four photos
* 13 logos and graphics
* four text fields
* six buttons
* one pop-up menu
* two ads

Compare that to a typical printed newspaper front page. USA Today's front page that same day had:

* eight headlines
* 15 blurbs with headlines
* two text articles
* four photos
* two illustrations
* one info-graphic
* two logos
* two charts
* one ad

(USA Today has one of the busier print front pages; most papers have fewer page elements.)

Now, compare that to Google, the highly celebrated Web search engine and a star in the Internet world right now, which on its search home page has:

* 13 links
* one piece of artwork
* one text field
* two buttons
* one piece of artwork

How has it come to this? Does a news site really need several hundred elements on its home page? I think not. Are design rules for the Web so different from print that online publishers can routinely toss hundreds of elements on a single page and not overwhelm the audience? No. Does Google know something that news publishers don't know? Probably.

But everyone else does it!

I chose to highlight washingtonpost.com not to vilify it. That site does with its home page what most of its competitors do. Indeed, in online journalism competitions, sites with bloated home pages most often win the top awards. Judges seem not to penalize sites that overload their home pages. For a number of years, I've been a judge in contests like the EPpy Awards and Online Journalism Awards -- and consistently the judges select sites that throw everything and the kitchen sink onto their home pages -- though that may be in part because there aren't many sites featuring compact home pages that we can honor.

As I look back on my judging experiences, I've noticed a gradual increase in the number of elements crammed onto news site home pages. Each year, they get more and more crowded -- to the point where it can border on the absurd. This obesity trend cannot continue. It needs to be reversed, and news home pages should begin to be pared back.

I'm not the only one who thinks it's time for a diet. In his recent Sensible Internet Design newsletter, journalist/Web-site designer Jay Small broached the subject, wondering out loud if news sites could learn a thing or two from Google's spare approach to home-page design. Small suggested that part of the problem is the unlimited space available on the Web. Without the constraints of a physical newsprint page or a 25-minute programming slot for TV news, it's too easy for page designers and editors to pile on content beyond what is reasonable -- because there's nothing stopping them.

Small says that at Dallas-based Belo Interactive, where he is regional director of news and operations, the team has embarked on an effort to see whether "super-simple" or "more cluttered" home-page designs best meet users' needs. It's not a slam-dunk that compact home pages will turn out the winner, Small points out. He wants to figure out what is the best way to get people off the home page or section-front pages, and down to single-article view. But at least the issue of home-page obesity is on radar screens in the online news community.

Search for the good ones

I can't cite many news sites that practice the uncluttered home-page approach. One of my favorites used to be MSNBC.com, which kept its home page to just slightly over a screenful. It uses mouse-over menus in its left-side navigation column that contain a ton of content -- but it's not visible until you interact with the page by moving your mouse around.

The old MSNBC.com home-page design is still pretty much intact, but it was marred recently by the addition of MSN navigation designed to draw more users to content elsewhere on the MSN network. This change turned one of the Web's stand-out home pages -- a beacon for simplicity and succinctness in news home-page design -- into a bloated mess. But pretend that MSN stuff isn't there and you get a pretty good example of how to front a news Web site without overwhelming users with too many choices.

Alas, you should be careful with the MSNBC.com approach, warns Small. When choices are hidden under pop-out menus, user tests show that they seldom get used. People tend to make their navigation decisions using links and content that they can see immediately, then only if they can't find what they're looking for do they go back and use such hierarchical menus.

The world, with fewer links

A good model for home-page brevity is the site of the International Herald Tribune. It was mentioned as a notable example of compact, efficient, and smart home-page design by several new-media experts who I consulted for this column. IHT.com on a recent day had: six main headlines/blurbs; eight small headline links; three photos; two charts and graphics; six ads; and seven section headings. Total number of links on the IHT home page: 67. (If you'll recall from earlier in this column, washingtonpost.com had 217 links.)

Like MSNBC.com, IHT.com hides much of its content under pop-down menus. Click on the "Regions" menu at the top of the page, for example, and you see a list of categories: Africa & Middle East, Americas, etc.

There's an interesting feature of the IHT.com home page: a world map that when clicked changes the world weather chart directly below it. An interesting variation of that feature -- which keeps in mind the home-page brevity we're discussing here -- would be to have the clickable map change the six main article headlines to reflect the top stories from that part of the world. A variation of this idea could work for local-news Web sites; click on a part of town and the home page changes to feature that area's top stories.

What I like about IHT.com's home page is that it gives the reader a quick take on what the IHT's editors think are the top stories of the day, in only six headlines. It's more of a newspaper approach -- editors pointing out what they think are the most significant events of the day, while leaving lesser stories for "inside" pages. What is common at many other news sites is a home page that includes dozens of article links, with scant hierarchical ranking beyond the top one or two stories of the day.

Martha Stone, a news new-media consultant and chair of the Society of News Design's New Media Committee, says that too many sites toss dozens of items on their home pages and don't bother to create much of a visual hierarchy indicating what's most important. When all links are equally important, the sheer volume of options can overwhelm a user.

"People don't want more (from their news sites), they want better," Stone says, and she recommends that site designers stop up-sizing and start "right-sizing." "We need to rethink the way we organize our Web sites," and get away from the kitchen-sink approach. She thinks too many news sites are "link farms" -- but it will take a huge change in mindset for most site designers to move away from that approach.

What's needed most, Stone points out, is research into what users want. If, as is typical, 10% of a Web site's pages attract 90% of traffic, then it may be that that 10% of the most popular content is what's best to include on a home page -- and some of that other 90% can be taken off.

Too many categories

What some news sites have done in order to have a lot of headlines on a home page is to divide them up into many categories. CNN.com's recent redesign took this approach, creating on the bottom half of the page 12 news categories, each featuring two headlines and a link to additional stories. That's another example of home-page bloat. My recommendation to CNN.com is to go on a diet and introduce more hierarchical presentation to get away from the overwhelming index look of the page.

Small says headline categorization is good, but limit your categories -- to, say, four to six main ones. And with that many, include about three headlines per category, with a "More stories..." link for each. The idea is to give your users a taste of the best content in each news category and allow them to click to go deeper -- not to present everything on the home page. The mistake at too many news sites is to overload the home page to demonstrate how much you've got.

There's not complete agreement on this issue. Andrew Devigal, who operates a Web design shop and is an assistant professor of journalism at San Francisco State University, points out that home pages have to serve as "section fronts" for a site's entire run of content. Long home pages with many links are not necessarily a bad thing, Devigal says, as long as they are organized well, present content in hierarchical fashion, and don't just contain a hodgepodge of undifferentiated headlines.

Is Google the answer?

Earlier, I mentioned Google's spare approach to interface design. As the designers I interviewed pointed out, Google vs. news Web sites is an apples-to-oranges comparison, but still I think there's something to be learned from the Google approach. It's no accident that Google tops the search-engine market right now -- compared to its competitors, it's a joy to use and oh so simple. Other search-engines aren't as link-ridden as most news site pages, but compared to Google, they're busy and more confusing. (Compare Google to MSN Search or Lycos.)

Your news site's home page doesn't have to be as spartan as Google's, but perhaps if you offer a slimmed-down page, your site can gain an advantage over it obese competitors.

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