12 replies to this topic

[joer80]

Just redid our newspaper website and need creative feedback.

Thanks!

http://www.texarkanagazette.com/

Edited by A.N.Onym, 01 April 2011 - 10:43 PM.

[DonnaFontenot]

In general, I like it. Clean, clear, easy to read, easy to get around.

The one thing I would probably consider if I were a newspaper is to give a more "magazine style" layout to my home page. Perhaps the best example I can think of is the paper.li format (which is just for tweeted stories), but I'm only talking about layout. See my paper.li example here: http://paper.li/DonnaFontenot

That type of layout gives me the top headlines across the spectrum of topics - news/sports/opinion, etc. on the home page, and the news currently on the front page would just be on the News subtab (as it is already). I like that. Others may not. But it's something to consider.

The way you have it now, the home page and the News tab are the same. By turning the home page into a magazine style headline edition of the various subtabs, you'd no longer have the home page looking just like the news page.

[joer80]

Good points.

I was thinking it would be bad to put headlines of everything on the homepage, because people might tend to scan them, and never leave the homepage.

The way it is now, people have more text to see if the story interests them, it gives me space to put the number of comments each has and a photo thumbnail, and to really know what is in the paper, they have to look at more than one page. (Just like the real thing.)

Thanks for your feedback so far!

[EGOL]

I like this clean design too.

I would add social sharing buttons such as the AddThis.com Like, Tweet, Email, Share

This will help spread the word about your stories.

[DonnaFontenot]

I didn't mean to limit it to just the headlines. The paper.li link I showed you also has excerpts and images, etc. What I meant by "headlines" was "the current bits and pieces of each section to tantalize the reader with how rich each section actually is".

[joer80]

Gotcha... So does it show like x amount of stories from each category, and then you have to click a link to see them all?

[joer80]

Thanks for the tip EGOL!

[joer80]

I went from the standard 3 banner per page layout, one at the top, one at the middle, and one at the bottom, to showing a banner at the top of the page, and a middle one dynamically placed every 3 stories.

This new method puts me at about 11 or so ads per page depending on the news for the day, and they are spaced out enough to were you don't even know its got more ads.

I switched over to dfp and did adsense as our unsold ad provider instead of making the normal 2-3 dedicated adsense spots per page.

Since the launch, our adsense revenue has more than doubled.

[joer80]

Just ran some reports for you guys.

Looks like the middle 300x250 is out preforming the top 728x90 by a decently large margin, and absolutely demolishing the 468x90 content ad in the same spot.

Top 728x90 is about 1.25 cpm adsense, Middle 300x250 is about 1.86, and Middle 468x60 is .73 cpm.

Also, when I look at the 300x250 content spot under the first story, and compare it to the 300x250 content spot under the second story, the first one preforms around 10x better than the second one overall. (1 month of stats.)

Very interesting...

[earlpearl]

What are your goals, Joer?

Do you want to expand local readership, expand readership to larger regions, more local/national advertising via banners and other elements, more adsense, other elements?

How would you rank your goals?

Its not my business but how do your banner ads do/total advertising income wise versus adsense? Which do you want to expand?

Also, on a straight visbility basis, I agree with Donna and with the example she gave. I find that to be a very readable, user friendly layout.

[EGOL]

Have you considered using Google search? Might be a good way to monetize the site. Some of my best income is from on-site search.

[joer80]

Have not thought about using Google search. Thats a good idea.

[FromScratch]

Great Discussion,

I would add maybe a Featured Article for a special Highlighted Story, and design it a lil different so it looks like a Featured Story.

It does seem kind of a long scroll too, I like the idea of a more magazine style layout, or 3 columns instead of 2.