For the first time in the Washington Post’s history they are bringing in outside help to redesign their Web site.
The redesign is supposed to be the biggest in the history of the Post. The current Post design isn’t nearly as solid as The New York Times or CNN. It just doesn’t flow well. Take a look at the homepage versus the national news page. There is no synergy between those pages.
Why doesn’t the national news page look and act more like the homepage? That’s what the Post is hoping to tackle with this latest redesign. Brady told Editor and Publisher:
“It is bigger than any other [redesign] since building it in the first place,” Brady says about his site, which first launched in 1996. “We are trying to fill it with the strategies we’ve emphasized the past few years — reader engagement, multi-media and providing useful data bases for our readers.”
It’s interesting that the Post of all companies, with it’s large Web staff, is bringing in outside help. If the Post needs to bring in outside help, almost every other paper might need to as well. But outside help only works if you hire good help.
Mediocre or bad Web design companies are a waste of your money and time. The Post will be working with The Wonder Factor of New York — a company with a huge roster of big-name clients. The Wonder Factor recently redesigned Newsweek (another Post property) and National Geographic.
Newsweek is an infinity better looking and navigable Web site than what the Post currently has. I haven’t spent enough time at the redesigned newsweek.com to do a full review, but I like what I see so far.
I’ll be real with everyone for a second: Almost every newspaper Web site sucks, even the so-called good ones. My newspaper’s site sucks, your’s sucks and your friend’s sucks.
And instead of sucking forever, maybe we should partner with people who don’t suck. I’m just saying, sometimes it’s fun not to suck. Sometimes it’s fun to make products that people want (AKA our readers and users).
The best designed journalism Web site is probably CNN.com, and I have yet to see a newspaper adopt CNN’s incredible easy to use and navigate minimalist Web 2.0 approach. Now if CNN just had better content, they’d really be in business.
Would your paper be open to having outside help? And, more importantly, would they pay for good help?
