8 ms·

So given all the hubbub lately I decided to visit Yahoo.com for the first time in years. I'm not really Yahoo's target audience, but my second-first impression

So given all the hubbub lately I decided to visit Yahoo.com for the first time in years. I'm not really Yahoo's target audience, but my second-first impressions are: - That little "Make Yahoo! your homepage" thing that slides down and moves the rest of the content with it has got to go (especially considering there's a "Make Y! your homepage" link RIGHT below it). - Clicking on the dot in the exclamation point still does the "Yahoo!" jingle, which is nice, but I don't like the new jingle. It's too polished. Old one was better. - The actual search bar is a bit heavy and "2005 Web 2.0" looking, but I suppose it needs to be a little chunky to stand out from everything else on the page (and there's a lot). - Overall, I like the color scheme and design, but it still feels a bit "heavy". The fact that there's SO MUCH STUFF on the front page suggests that this real estate is a design-by-committee thing and that politics is heavily involved. There's so much stuff and it's packed so tightly together that I really can't decide what I want to look at. - The Olympics banner is neat. - The top news rotator is OK, but it's a little clumsy. - The subsections, like Yahoo! News and Yahoo! TV, feel too different from each other and too different from the main site. - Speaking of target audience, the "Trending Now" section is neat, but I'm not sure I like what it's saying. Between that, the "Must-See Videos on Yahoo!", and the "Most Popular" section below it, I get the feeling that I just stepped into a middle-class hair salon. I'm not trying to be elitist, it's just that this site really seems to scream "late 30-something suburbian white woman with a minivan" in a way that most other sites don't, so I don't feel very welcome here. Shouldn't the front page to one of the world's most recognized online brands start out a little more neutral and slowly BECOME about whatever it is you're usually interested in? ArsTechnica does a good job of this, building up a "Your Stories" section based on stuff you've clicked on an (presumably) how long you stuck around after you clicked. - A little more nitpicky, but I think it's another indication of Yahoo!'s most prime real-estate being driven by corporate politics and ladder-climbing (because I'm going to give the page designer a benefit of the doubt): take a look at all the section headings. You have "YAHOO! SITES", "TRENDING NOW", "MUST-SEE VIDEOS ON YAHOO!", "MOST POPULAR", "POLL", "FAVORITES". There doesn't seem to be much consistency in the color or font size with these. - So, yeah, "Favorites". How come I just NOW (within the last 30 seconds) found that? It's way below the fold of the sites list. Aren't my favorites kind of important? Shouldn't they be above "Yahoo! Sites"? And why are they already populated? Yahoo! on FB, Yahoo! on Twitter? How are those my favorites? I never told you I liked those... These are the kind of things that make it a little TOO obvious that I, humble visitor, am the product being sold. - The bottom footer (no, not the real footer, the footer above that) seems redundant. "More Yahoo! Sites" contains only slightly different content than the "Yahoo! Site" area, and there's already a way from right there to see more. If you want to promote new or underperforming sub-sites, why not try a sites recommendation engine based on the stuff you've visited? Follow Yahoo could be placed elsewhere, and the "About Yahoo" stuff can certainly be combined and replace the "About our Ads" thing on the real footer. - When performing an actual search, the results aren't too bad (they're powered by Bing, which isn't wonderful but it isn't terrible either). In fact, the search listings are a lot less cluttered than what Google's results have become.... it's almost refreshing.

chao- 14y ago
I wrote up some similar points and posted the trimmed down version a moment afterward. I'll reply instead, and try to avoid bashing the design since you've got that covered. Instead I want to discuss focus. Being neck-deep in Startuplandia, I'm accustomed to discussing smaller companies who are striving, struggling even, to achieve success with a singular focus. Do one thing, do it well. You won't gain users doing several things poorly. Or in Yahoo's case, you will hemorrhage the users you once had. I understand that large companies do have the resources to delve into many spheres and markets at once. I also grasp how each additional product/focus can leverage your brand recognition and existing userbase for alternative revenue streams. Even if only 10% of my users pay for [New Feature X], that's still money in the bank! At the same time, when I think of Yahoo, three things come to mind: Email, Search and Content (so-called). The first two aren't anything Yahoo is the name for anymore and the last one is ludicrously expansive. News, fine. Original web series videos, eh, maybe? But look at the first three items on their list. Autos, Dating (?!) and Finance. Yes I know it's alphabetical, but it's a sign that they still think they can be "The Homepage of the Internet" or some such madness. This may be the point where Yahoo has to get its hands out of some of those cookie jars and focus on doing less, better. Even if that means a shiny, new platform at the expense of current ones, and even if that means it's a little over-hyped. As long as they finally have one thing they can point at and say "THIS is what Yahoo does, because we do it better than anyone."
pnathan 14y ago
Honestly, Yahoo today looks less 'clean' than AOL and abous as bad as Fox News. I am not impressed. Okay, I may not be the target visitor. But I think that my design aesthetic (minimalistic, simple, low-clutter) is not uncommon, even among non-geeks.
antidoh 14y ago
"there's SO MUCH STUFF on the front page" I haven't been there for a long time, so I went there to follow your critique, and my first thought was WTF is all this? This is like a 90s site map, with pictures.
- drblast 14y ago

chao- 14y ago

I wrote up some similar points and posted the trimmed down version a moment afterward. I'll reply instead, and try to avoid bashing the design since you've got that covered. Instead I want to discuss focus. Being neck-deep in Startuplandia, I'm accustomed to discussing smaller companies who are striving, struggling even, to achieve success with a singular focus. Do one thing, do it well. You won't gain users doing several things poorly. Or in Yahoo's case, you will hemorrhage the users you once had. I understand that large companies do have the resources to delve into many spheres and markets at once. I also grasp how each additional product/focus can leverage your brand recognition and existing userbase for alternative revenue streams. Even if only 10% of my users pay for [New Feature X], that's still money in the bank! At the same time, when I think of Yahoo, three things come to mind: Email, Search and Content (so-called). The first two aren't anything Yahoo is the name for anymore and the last one is ludicrously expansive. News, fine. Original web series videos, eh, maybe? But look at the first three items on their list. Autos, Dating (?!) and Finance. Yes I know it's alphabetical, but it's a sign that they still think they can be "The Homepage of the Internet" or some such madness. This may be the point where Yahoo has to get its hands out of some of those cookie jars and focus on doing less, better. Even if that means a shiny, new platform at the expense of current ones, and even if that means it's a little over-hyped. As long as they finally have one thing they can point at and say "THIS is what Yahoo does, because we do it better than anyone."

pnathan 14y ago

Honestly, Yahoo today looks less 'clean' than AOL and abous as bad as Fox News. I am not impressed. Okay, I may not be the target visitor. But I think that my design aesthetic (minimalistic, simple, low-clutter) is not uncommon, even among non-geeks.

antidoh 14y ago

"there's SO MUCH STUFF on the front page" I haven't been there for a long time, so I went there to follow your critique, and my first thought was WTF is all this? This is like a 90s site map, with pictures.

drblast 14y ago