Guardian overhauls Australian site
The redesigned site
The Guardian’s Australian site has had a major design overhaul after an 18-month project involving 45 staff and eight months of beta testing with five per cent of its global audience to iron out bugs.
Today the publisher hit the switch on the new version, which sees the homepage move to a “modular” layout allowing users to customise it to their preferences, with Wolfgang Blau, Guardian’s director of digital strategy, telling Mumbrella it also allowed for more customisable ad slots.
Stylistically the site has moved to a serif font for its editorial content and increased the size of the text, however native advertising will be “clearly labelled, and shown in a non-serif font as we do not want to try and trick the readers”, added Blau.
I know the Guardian has put a lot of work into the redesign of its web site. There is a chance I will adjust to it. But at the moment I find it much harder to discover what is on the site and wish they would go back to the original user friendly site.
In terms of layout and design, the old Guardian site was the best news website in the world. The new one is unusable.
I must say my first reaction is to agree with Lindsay. I find the old scroll down a lot easier to navigate than the zigzag needed with the new design, even if it didn’t look as pretty.
Works for me.
Horrible move. Much prefer the older design. Whoever was beta tested with this new design must have been working undercover for Fairfax.
I deleted my shortcut. The new site is FUBAR.
I like it. Much easier to navigate the content than the old, jumbled, confusing layout.