It’s been 8 months since the Globe and Mail redesign. With it came a layout formatted for 1024×768, a commenting engine, multiple RSS feeds, a news ticker and more. It is in my opinion a huge improvement over the old site. I especially love the article pages. The type is incredibly easy to read and, while there are ads, they don’t take prominence over the content. However, I do find it difficult to scan the headlines on the home page.

The home page tweak is simple: Create headline styles that stand out more than the rest of the page content. They do an excellent job of this in their printed paper. If you look at the front page of their print version you can easily scan the page for the day’s top news. Large type set with an appropriate amount of space surrounding it makes for easy scanability.

While making some of these changes to the mock-up there were a few other things that were modified to increase the prominence of headlines. The most obvious of these changes were to the ads. Both the quantity, and more importantly, their placement.

Of course, the website is “free” for the majority of users (The exception is the “insider” pay content). I also understand that ads drive revenue and help cover costs/profits margins but the home page needn’t look like a classifieds section to do so. Look at the front page of their newspaper, you’ll find one large ad at the bottom of the page. Now look at their home page, its littered with ads – above the main navigation, sandwiched in between the left rail navigation, in between content. Some are text based, others are standard IAB sizes, you get the idea.

By limiting the number and changing the placement of ads on the home page it becomes more scanable. The site still has plenty of opportunities for advertisers to speak to the readers, and others could be conceived.

The last thing of note is the news ticker. The design above envisioned it as more of a CNN style ticker that stays anchored to the bottom of the page. Large type, smooth animation – more of a broadcast feel.

I have to give the design team credit. It’s easy for us to sit on the periphery and blue sky “better” ways to design the home page, free of business requirements. They of course had those requirements and hence designed ways to work the ads into the home page.

Here are large examples: before and after