BBC.com has been given major redesign with a focus on images and touchscreen access, with users currently able to switch between the old and new (beta) design and provide feedback.
The new look features a touchscreen friendly “carousel” that enables users to flick from one story to the next, and it is a design that the BBC plans on providing a more consistent look across various devices including PCs, mobile phones, tablets and internet-TVs.
The most interesting change in the design, however, is the move away from social sharing integration and personalisation. Only a very small proportion of users actually used the personalisation options anyway except for setting their location for weather information, but as with many sites, a larger and larger proportion of traffic is driven by social media – with many people rarely visiting homepages directly. The BBC has, however, decided to rely more on its own editorial direction than crowdsourcing as many news sites now do (most notably the Huffington Post) – and this may play to their strengths as they are world renowned for their depth of reporting and impartiality.
The BBC is currently the UK’s fourth most popular family of sites, behind Google, Microsoft, and Facebook, with the homepage getting around 9 million unique visitors per week (behind its own news and sport offerings).
[via FT]