How web 2.0 is The Times?
Competitor Analysis – Mainstream news media site: THE TIMES
You may remember earlier in the year that I looked at some student newspaper websites in preparation for starting to design our very own newspaper website. Well we thought it would be a good idea if we looked at how the big boys do it, so each member of the team was assigned a news media site to look at and analyse, focusing this time specifically on web 2.0. I went for The Times and you know what, it isn’t half bad!
DESIGN & INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
The Times Online, which was launched in 1996 was subject to a £10 million overhaul in early 2007. In an effort to be more web 2.0, they ditched the old black and white design in favour of a colour-coding scheme incorporating a rather surprisingly attractive lime green, blue and grey. One of the men behind the overhaul, Tomaso Capuano, calls it ‘classic with a twist’. Another creator, Jon Warden said the redesign process involved a discussion of “everything from YouTube to blogs to Amazon to the BBC to Google News“. It’s probably changed significantly since then, but I have to agree that it feels quite funky and in tune with the web 2.0 era. Hey – it even won News Site of the Year at the 2008 Newspaper Awards!
There is a lot of white space, rules, bold and light contrasts, and straight edges, that give the site a ‘clean-cut’, clutter-free image. The main content is highlighted typically on the left, with the latest main news stories clearly visible at the top of the page. The other main stories are grouped into their relevant sections, and follow beneath the top headlines.
The sidebar is used typically for adverts, most read stories, quick links, podcasts and search tools. The navigation is at the top of the screen, which is good as the user gets to see the entire main contents of the site without the need for a scroll. The header runs above it, but beneath a rather large flash advert, which causes the fold to be slightly higher than on some other news sites.
CONTENT
The majority of content on The Times Online is re-purposed, although there is a great deal that is specific to the site. As well as traditional methods of re-purposing, the Times also adds to the articles by including related links, allowing users to have their say, including audio and video wherever possible, and adding flash picture galleries. By including these various multimedia extras, The Times Online is taking advantage of the web’s potential, and giving stories available in the printed version an extra dimension, which could make them worth reading again.
WEB 2.0 FEATURES
Web 2.0 enhances creativity, information sharing, interactivity, customisable accessibility, and a sense of community between users. Many of the features described in ‘re-purposing’ above are web 2.0 features, but for the purpose of this analysis I will split each feature into sections: RSS Feeds, Flash, Comments, Blogs, E-mail & Text alerts, Social bookmarking, Links, Multimedia, Podcasts and Mobile News. From the sheer size of that list, we can begin to gauge how successful The Times incorporates web 2.0 features onto its sit.
Although not immediately recognisable from the homepage, The Times Online does take adavntage of ‘real simple syndication,’ all be it under the banner of ‘news feeds’ right at the bottom of the page. Once you have clicked on the link you see the ever present orange rss logo (that wasn’t present on the homepage) to let you know you’ve found the right place. There is easily over 100 feeds, ranging from top stories, to business, to specialist, to columnists, to blogs, to podcasts to… (to quote Jim – you get my drift).
The feeds allow users to keep up to date with articles, blogs and multimedia from Times Online by adding an RSS feed to a reader or compatible web browser to receive instant notifications of new content to view on the website. Each feed entry displays a headline, description and URL back to Times Online, or a link to a downloadable audio, video or pdf files. This tool is a perfect web 2.0 feature, and although a little hidden away, is simple and effective. Oh yeah – and they Twitter. – i.e. they up-date regularly on Twitter the latest headlines and links to the stories on the site.
FLASH
The Times Online takes advantage of flash via their picture galleries, scrolling headlines on the top of the homepage, and as an attractive yet efficient way of highlighting numerous feature/stories using minimal space on the homepage. Flash is also used for adverts – but lets not credit them with that shall we. Flash adds to the on-screen interactivity and allows more content to be presented in a smaller space.
At the end of each article, The Times Online allows you to ‘have your say’. This web 2.0 tool increases a sense of community amongst users, as often people now like to have their opinion on everything known to everyone (or that’s how it seems anyway). No really, the way I see it is that it is usually the same 50 people or so who comment on every article, and they probably just enjoy winding each other up – a glorified chat room. However, in terms of web 2.0, I guess it increases interactivity via discussion. Noticeably though, the comment form is concealed and instead you have to click -’have your say’, which at first is not all that obvious.
Although it aids the design by creating less clutter, the inclusion of a permanent comment would likely increase the number of comments left, thus creating a bigger, better and more active community. Comments are also encouraged via the ‘most commented on articles’ in the sidebar on the homepage, and the ‘call to send your views’ in the banner under the columnist promotion.
The Times Online has a good selection of typepad based blogs, although you have to click into the comment section before you can access them, which for me took about 10 minutes. Maybe I’m stupid. Maybe they’re stupid. Maybe it’s late and I just couldn’t think. Whatever the reason, they could be made a little more prominent. They use widgets cleverly to display recent comments, and take advantage of social bookmarking and feeds to draw readers into the blogs and keep them staying tuned, also allowing them to comment. Even though the blogs migrate to typepad, there is no real obvious design difference to that of the blogs and the main site, which ensures the transition, is smooth.
EMAIL AND TEXT ALERTS
The Times Online offers to send readers the news they want on the move, via e-mail news bulletins or short text alerts. The free e-mail service also includes previews of the next day’s newspaper.
After each article and after each blog post, The Times Online allows users to social bookmark the news story along with giving you the option to print or e-mail it. The site currently gives you icons that allow you to bookmark using Del.icio.us, Yahoo, Digg and Fark, although similarly to the RSS feeds icon, they are not as distinguishable as possible due to a design decision to make them blue to match the colour scheme. Social bookmarking allows users to share information they find interesting with other web users, and also keep articles of interest organised so they themselves can go back to it easily at a later date.
LINKS
Although not strictly speaking a web 2.0 feature, I feel if used in a certain way, can add to the web 2.0 experience. Related inks appear in the sidebar on every story, and also at the bottom of the page. These link out to related stories within the Times Online site, whilst also linking out to material of interest on other sites. The stories also often link to related blogs on the sites, which again link out to relevant material.
For the purpose of this analysis, when talking of multimedia I’m talking audio, and video. Whenever possible for a story, the site includes related videos and audio that adds to the story, increasing interactivity and participation. All the videos are collected and are viewable in the ‘Times Online TV’ section. The link/icon for this can be found at the bottom of the homepage under Services and Tools, along with podcasts, news feeds etc. The online TV section works well as Time’s very own Youtube, with all their videos viewable and easily searchable on one page.
The podcast section again comes under the banner of audio and video on The Times site, but more often than not related podcasts are promoted and linked to via the sidebar on the homepage or various content pages. There are lots of podcasts to choose from, but it seems the sport ones are the most popular. They are easily accessible, and there is a link to allow you to subscribe to them via itunes.
This could I guess come under multimedia, but basically the times offers a free mobile internet service that you can subscribe to by text or access via the internet on your phone. They have even made an iphone specific web page that is based solely around images, when touched link to the related stories – a pretty cool feature.
CONCLUSIONS
From all that analysis, I feel that The Times Online is a great example of how to do news sites. Since the re-launch, the design is one of the best I have seen, and it is really accessible for users. They make use of various web 2.0 techniques to engage and interact with the user, and have a lot of ‘exclusive’ content that cannot be found in the paper. When they do re-purpose content, they usually add multimedia features and link appropriately to make the story worth another visit. Via social bookmarking, comments and blogs, they have increased the sense of community and it is clear that users are leaving their mark on the site – which is good. The widget on the homepage showing the most visited, most commented, and most curious stories is a clear example of this, and in itself encourages more users to get involved. One downside is that in places due to the design scheme, non-standardised icons are used for feeds and social bookmarking, which could lead some lesser knowledgeable users believe that these tools do not exist.
All in all though a great site that makes great use of web 2.0, and hopefully we can take some of their ideas and try and emulate them with our own Canvas site. I hope to post some of these ideas up in my next post so keep an eye out.
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