Website relaunches and redesigns often polarize regular site visitors - "why did you change it?!!", "I don't like that one single bit", or "that looks so much better," "thank you for finally fixing that".
These are all common responses in the days following a major change.
So it may be of interest to fans of Flightglobal to provide some backdrop to the redesign elements of the relaunched site.
The driving need for a major change was that the old version of the site (dating back from 2005) was designed for a previous era of websites (and browsers / devices).
It hails back to the day when flightglobal.com's primary function was to deliver news and jobs for free to its visitors.
Since then Flightglobal has added many new areas and layers to the site, e.g. community areas, historic archive, video, social media, and now premium data and research channels.
These additions have been bolted onto the old navigation and pages templates one after another until the site's structure and user experience has begun to creak under the tangle.
Today's relaunch has given us the opportunity to reorganize the "information architecture" as well as tackle many of the usability issues that have developed over the years.
Users of other popular multimedia websites will see where we have borrowed best practice.
The bbc.co.uk for example, is one of the leading examples of a site that serves a lot of different types of users trying to achieve many different activities (e.g. news, weather, tv programmes, radio listings, iplayer, games etc ...) all under one url.
Elements of the main bbc home page have influenced our own global home page as we look to surface the raft of different activities visitors to flightglobal.com are trying to achieve.
We also wanted to bring back an element of magazine style to the website, which is something the previous generation of websites often sacrificed at the expense of functionality and search engine optimisation.
Today's software and technology facilitates the reintroduction of design features that help visitors enjoy their time on the site as well as find what they're looking for quickly.
The most obvious hat tip towards design cool is our home page "skyscape". For launch we have one skyscape and one aircraft silhouette but with subsequent development the skyscape will alter depending on the time of day and the aircraft silhouette will be drawn from a selection of different aircraft.
Elsewhere on the site, our cleaner-looking news channels are in tune with the current best practice design, meaning the whole news browsing experience is more comfortable and more enjoyable.
These include: article text size has been increased, intrusive advertising has been scaled back, hyperlink colours are more obvious, slick carousel controls expose more news content without using up more space, blog and video content is now displayed alongside traditional news content, and the list goes on.
Our navigation features an integrated crumb trail (also seen on the guardian.co.uk) helping to reduce the vertical size of our header and deliver colour orientation cues for site visitors.
We've rolled out a new "universal footer", acting as a mini sitemap, which should mean that wherever you are on the site you can get to your intended destination within a click or two.
Failing that, there's even an "All channels" page accessible via the "More" navigation tab that features a full and comprehensive list of pages and places on flightglobal.com.
A finally note on feedback. Fundamentally, we're trying to make flightglobal.com as user friendly as possible.
If you feel strongly about something we've done or haven't done - no matter how small - then please let us know. If we don't know about it, we can't fix it.
These are all common responses in the days following a major change.
So it may be of interest to fans of Flightglobal to provide some backdrop to the redesign elements of the relaunched site.
The driving need for a major change was that the old version of the site (dating back from 2005) was designed for a previous era of websites (and browsers / devices).
It hails back to the day when flightglobal.com's primary function was to deliver news and jobs for free to its visitors.
Since then Flightglobal has added many new areas and layers to the site, e.g. community areas, historic archive, video, social media, and now premium data and research channels.These additions have been bolted onto the old navigation and pages templates one after another until the site's structure and user experience has begun to creak under the tangle.
Today's relaunch has given us the opportunity to reorganize the "information architecture" as well as tackle many of the usability issues that have developed over the years.
Users of other popular multimedia websites will see where we have borrowed best practice.
The bbc.co.uk for example, is one of the leading examples of a site that serves a lot of different types of users trying to achieve many different activities (e.g. news, weather, tv programmes, radio listings, iplayer, games etc ...) all under one url.
Elements of the main bbc home page have influenced our own global home page as we look to surface the raft of different activities visitors to flightglobal.com are trying to achieve.
We also wanted to bring back an element of magazine style to the website, which is something the previous generation of websites often sacrificed at the expense of functionality and search engine optimisation. Today's software and technology facilitates the reintroduction of design features that help visitors enjoy their time on the site as well as find what they're looking for quickly.
The most obvious hat tip towards design cool is our home page "skyscape". For launch we have one skyscape and one aircraft silhouette but with subsequent development the skyscape will alter depending on the time of day and the aircraft silhouette will be drawn from a selection of different aircraft.
Elsewhere on the site, our cleaner-looking news channels are in tune with the current best practice design, meaning the whole news browsing experience is more comfortable and more enjoyable.
These include: article text size has been increased, intrusive advertising has been scaled back, hyperlink colours are more obvious, slick carousel controls expose more news content without using up more space, blog and video content is now displayed alongside traditional news content, and the list goes on.
Our navigation features an integrated crumb trail (also seen on the guardian.co.uk) helping to reduce the vertical size of our header and deliver colour orientation cues for site visitors.
We've rolled out a new "universal footer", acting as a mini sitemap, which should mean that wherever you are on the site you can get to your intended destination within a click or two.
Failing that, there's even an "All channels" page accessible via the "More" navigation tab that features a full and comprehensive list of pages and places on flightglobal.com.
A finally note on feedback. Fundamentally, we're trying to make flightglobal.com as user friendly as possible.
If you feel strongly about something we've done or haven't done - no matter how small - then please let us know. If we don't know about it, we can't fix it.
on September 26, 2011 7:05 PM | Reply
Looks good, just in time for the 787. Two new additions to the aviation community. All the Best.
on September 30, 2011 1:42 PM | Reply
Skyscape should be at top and not so big! - it makes sense to have sky above all else!
Also in Safari web browser 5.0.6 most of the text is too close to the margins so it gets clipped.
How about a poll for the new site? Are you that brave?!
Or at least a feedback section for users.
Only hope you are not going the way of the Times and others in seeking to make the web a paid experience!
on October 4, 2011 7:46 AM | Reply
- not happy with the new design -
I'm missing the complete news overview.
The new page isn't as easy to navigate as it was before. More klicks needed, but less information.
.mg
on October 4, 2011 12:52 PM | Reply
It al sounds great but I must say that I find the new website really annoying. The most annoying thing: I used to look at the newsheadlines on page one 3 times a day and to do so you now I have to click three or four times and get all kind of nonsense like the "skyscape" to get through to the news which is than poluted with Blogs, again too many pictuers hence less newstopics viewable, then a huge "the most read" stuff at the bottum. etc.
The opening page is the most annoying. You used to have the recent news nice at the top which was your strength and now you get all this huge pictures and stuff you guys (and gals) deem important.. Hope you have a good tracking system to see what people are using and what not. I for one am looking at other means/sites to have quick reader friendly aviation news content update.
I think you pretty well sum it up yourselves what my issues are: "which is something the previous generation of websites often sacrificed at the expense of functionality and search engine optimisation." In other words: you have for me thrown out the functionality completly...