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.
A "neat this, neat that, not too bad" review of a Yahoo homepage even though it's the exact same kaka as it was two weeks ago. Who would've thought that getting a notable ex-Googler on board would have a such immediate effect on swaying geeks in a pro-Yahoo direction?
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."
> this site really seems to scream "late 30-something suburbian white woman with a minivan" in a way that 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
On the contrary, you, personally, are not Yahoo's stereotypical user. Yahoo absolutely should start out appealing to its primary demographic as that will hook the greatest number of new visitors, and you've just described the typical web user. That web user will feel much more at home on this default page than on Ars Technica's default page.
I agree with you that in time, the page should adapt, and preferably rapidly. The difference is the starting point which should be the same as the starting point in the grocery checkout lane. You also shop at the grocery, but the checkout lane isn't designed for you.
Not exactly, I stopped visiting Yahoo and went to a more neutral site like Google News for this very reason.
Last I checked, news on Yahoo was becoming a joke, in my opinion. This reflected across their entire site, and even more so in the quality of their comments. I hope Marissa Mayer changes this, I doubt that any aspiring web company wants to be known for this.
1) REALLY need a way to graph "adjusted stock price" or "growth of $10,000" instead of just raw stock price. Otherwise, mutual fund graphs fall off a cliff every December due to payment of capital gains distributions and dividends (the drop is not economically meaningful and it makes it hard to compare to an index or other security). If you look at their "Historic Prices" page they have the data (called "Adj Close"), they just don't give you a way to graph it.
2) Since they started displaying real-time auto-updating stock prices recently, the percent change and dollar change are often out of sync (at least in my browser, Seamonkey). Sometimes, one is negative while the other is positive, so it's pretty obvious. I'm surprised the exchanges haven't slapped them silly for this (I believe you have to register with the exchanges if you are going to display their data to ensure that are competent enough to not display bad prices).
Genuinely curious what keeps you in Y! Mail over GMail. Is it the history of your messages, the familiarity of the system, or something else entirely?
The last time I looked at Yahoo's mail, you had to pay to enable IMAP access. Even stranger, it wasn't a recurring fee, but just some one-time deal. Seems to have changed now, at least?
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.
I wonder if they're optimising for profitability (while aiming to only keep user retention steady), or if this is really what the target users want.
I read anywhere that pages in japan are supposed to be chock full, you don't want any white space. Incidentally Yahoo Japan is very popular (although it does have different management, yahoo US only have as minority stake in it). There could be types of users elsewhere in the world who want the same kind of thing
Interesting, could be. Certainly most internet plans in New Zealand have a bandwidth cap, since all the traffic comes through very long expensive cables. That means round trips are slow too, which might be more relevant. Still does't explain a lot of things though.
Do you seriously think if Google published Trending Now searches, it would be any different from Yahoo!? Or are you suggesting Yahoo! should editorialize?
This is how I see the Yahoo! logo: http://cl.ly/image/0s1D0j13212C
The main logo is in Flash, and I block all plugins in Chrome, so all I see is a gray rectangle...
Design-by-committee indeed. I saw this happen with my own eyes at a bunch of companies. Executives get together, and they all try to place their sub-project on the front page. Nobody says "no", because they have their own sub-projects. So you end up with this crap.
- 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.