5 things id improve with the new BBC’s homepage

Last week (Tuesday 26th February) BBC took their Beta version of the homepage into live production. As its my Firefox home page which i view many times a day, i thought id give my thoughts on it and 5 ways how id improve it.

First off i think the BBC (or the hired team) has done a great job. The site makes extensive use of AJAX and clever Javascript’ing which allows user customisation. The clock is a clever addition and the natural way the second tick round by adding a slight fade is a nice touch. Its these little, subtle additions and thats add to the users perception of quality of a brand / business.

I love the way i can choose what content appears on my screen. I quickly got rid of the Children, Radio, TV ( which ill get onto ) and I-Player sections and adding in sections such as business, technology news and a few others. Dragging those content sections into my prefered locations was a breeze and highly intuitive, in the way the cross hair appears when hovering over the top of the rounded box, housing each content area. There are numerous other things i could i go into detail about it works but i highly recommend you try it out for yourself. Here is what id do to improve it.

1.) Implement a Login system: If you change computers, change locations, swap web browsers or clear your cookies, then unfortunately all the fun of creating your own little personalized BBC homepage has been wasted! The website stores your customized details in a cookie. A simple way round this would be to implement a log in system which would allow you to login within a standardised user name and password. Then users would be able to view their on own settings anywhere, on any device. Some of you may think it only takes a few minutes (or seconds depending on the extent of the customization) to the edit the page options each time. If your someone like me however that uses multiple computers and devices in different locations, frequently, it becomes a bit of a pain. The BBC may have a security / privacy issue with this solution ( which im sure they would have thought about. This login system however, would improve the experience for a number of users.

2.) The size of the BBC main advert. Unfortunately this section, in the top right of the web page, cannot be customized as it hard wired into the design. As the main computer i use has a 1024 x 768 screen, this part of the web page takes up about half the screen height and more about 3/4 of the screen width. Its obtrusive and takes away importance from the other sections i pay more attention too. I can live with it, sure, but it would improve things and allow me to access the information iv carefully customized to my preferences.

3.) Lovely shop window but: The design, look and feel of the front page is great, however when you click on any of links to the news stories, the old, outdated website appears in all its glory (or not). Its like having a fantastic shop window with intriguing products, but when you look further into the shop it has poorly maintained facilities. I’m guessing the BBC will be updating these inner pages at some point, but i think it would have been better to wait ( depending on how long its going to take ) and launch it all at once.

4.) TV listings. While i watch selected BBC viewed programmes, it would have been a welcome addition to have competing broadcasters programme listings. As this is the BBC’s own site they have omitted these for obvious reasons however from a users point of view i don’t just view their channels. For this reason i turned off that section in my customisation. I could even live with it if they had their own channels heavily promoted compared to others, but for now ill look for all TV listings from other available media.

5.) CodeWise - From a web designers point of view: Much of a what a web designers / developers does goes on in the background (and what 95% of everyday, general web users don’t see ) and that is the code. This can be viewed from Page > View Source (in IE7 :: The browser which the majority of people will be viewing this article from.) It uses some on page styling, which would be better put in one of the already used standalone CSS files. It also fails with the CSS validation, on a tiny matter which is due to the lazyness of the design team.

Well that’s 5 of ways id improve the new, exciting and modern BBC homepage, which i really like on the whole and i commend them for doing a great job. As with any website ( and i mean any on the entire web) however, there is always room for improvement.

Please post any comments you may have.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 2nd, 2008 at 1:05 pm and is filed under Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.