Website critique

I evaluated the websites of the NY Times, MSNBC and US News. Each site had its advantages and disadvantages but they all seem to address the general needs of their audience.

The New York Times

The main strength of the NY Times website was their immense amount of content. The overall web design works well for their demographic because it’s less focused on graphics and thus seems more serious.


The homepage is void of color using one main picture and one video. Just about all the articles can be shared through sites like Facebook and delicious, a definite strength. The site focuses less on pictures and video, instead giving the reader a wealth of stories to choose from.

There are six main folders at the top of the page. The problem is they are so small that you really have to look for them to notice them. I found the usability to be good in the sense that it takes into account the desire for a simplified layout.

I also enjoyed the interface. Navigating pages between different contents was quick and once I found a story it was in large 14 pt. type that was really easy to read. One weakness of the site was the small size of the headlines which fails to bring attention to the major stories.

There is a My Times folder that is personalized and allows for news and blog updates. The next folder over is the Today’s paper section that contains jump tags. There is even an enlargeable template with a NY Times paper layout to simulate a printed paper.

All the pages on the site are extraordinarily long and stuffed with plenty of content. Depending on your reading comprehension you might be there a while if your planning on reading it all.
The next folder over is a video folder containing 773 videos most of which are about 5 minutes in length each. I found this to be an overwhelming strength. There was a wide variety of video topics and it was obvious that the NY Times is sending out drones of diverse reporters to cover all kinds of interesting stories.

One weakness I found was the folder called Most Popular. I found the majority of those popular stories just too much of a mix of random favorites. The articles were unorganized and it was hard to find any interesting stories because they weren’t my favorites they were the favorites of other readers.

MSNBC

MSNBC has its main folders located on the left side of the homepage. At the top of the homepage are links to their flag ship shows such as Dateline and Meet the Press. Readers can rate the articles, email them and participate in blogs.

There seems to be an overwhelming amount of AP wire stories on the site. It’s quite a contrast from the NY Times website, though I realize they aren’t direct competitors. The wire stories just don’t have a personal feel to them.

The site uses tables with thick colorful borders to break up the pages. It makes the NY Times website look cramped. I don’t feel as directed to one most important story because they use two main stories on the homepage.

The pages load erratically at times and can be slow. I would say that MSNBC’s interface is a weakness. MSNBC makes use of dhtml with its drop down menus, something the Times and US News don’t use.

They have a section where by using a map you can click your state for local news . My query turned up news from Queens and Long Island. Another section, named "community" is basically a news aggregator.

MSNBC has a disable fly out feature for those who don’t like certain aspects of Web 2.0. It took quite a while to find a story written by a staff member of MSNBC but eventually I found one. Tucked into the Tech & Science section was a story written by the senior editor of that section.

Within the U.S. News section are several interesting folders such as Race ,Faith ,and Weird news .
They seem like very thought provoking sections that seem to be geared toward a fanatical following. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen folders like this on any news website. One draw back to the site is its ads. I found it hard to be reading any part of the main pages without peaking at the ads.

US News

US News has a combination of pictures, video and ads. Their layout is similar to the NY Times site in that it is less Web 2.0 oriented. A rotating photo banner located on the homepage is probably the biggest stand out of the site. A viewer cant miss it changing every five seconds with a picture, a headline, and a short descriptive sentence.

I found that the pages loaded slowly, much slower than MSNBC. A definite downside was that despite lacking many Web 2.0 features, the pages loaded much slower than a more basic interface like the one employed by the New York Times. One strong point to the US News site was that it allows the reader to share the story with up to 16 other social networking and news aggregator sites.

The ads are spaced out but are plentiful and therefore very distracting. Interestingly the US news site doesn’t seem to support all browsers. A few searches from different computers at different locations yielded inconsistent navigating. Pages either worked, loaded slow or couldn’t load at all.

Final verdict

Overall MSNBC had the most advanced website considering the project guidelines. Even though the interface has some issues, MSNBC proved to be the most interactive. The NY Times was the most simple and consistently quick loading site examined but it lacked interactivity. The US News site proved to be the worst site, even though they are as interactive as MSNBC because of their buggy interface and their browser compatibility issues.


Here is a video about Web 2.0