New tech news website design; how's it look?

[amnost]

I just relaunched and redesigned my website (www.techzang.com).

I was hoping I could get some input on what you think about the design. Keep in mind, the rate of articles published is going to see a massive increase soon as we get running in full motion.

Thanks

 

[boss.king]

I just relaunched and redesigned my website (www.techzang.com).

I was hoping I could get some input on what you think about the design. Keep in mind, the rate of articles published is going to see a massive increase soon as we get running in full motion.

Thanks

The text is fairly large. Maybe consider dropping it down a few sizes.

Other than that it's fairly clean and pretty.

 

[miles01110]

Looks boring.

 

[r1ch4rd]

You have a couple of minor accessibility issues. Some of your images are missing alt tags or the alt text isn't always very descriptive. This is a particular problem because some of your images in the side bar contain text.

I have to agree with miles01110 too. It's a bit boring. Perhaps a more eye catching header would help.

 

[anotonin]

I just relaunched and redesigned my website (www.techzang.com).

I was hoping I could get some input on what you think about the design. Keep in mind, the rate of articles published is going to see a massive increase soon as we get running in full motion.

Thanks

It looks ok. But can darken the text color against the gray background. It looks the background color overwhelms the text color making it difficult to read.

 

[EvryDayImShufln]

It looks ok. But can darken the text color against the gray background. It looks the background color overwhelms the text color making it difficult to read.

Agreed, the text color is too light for me too. But I really like the clean design of the posts!

I also find there's too much dead space on top of the logo and underneath it.

 

[jtara]

Too much space. Gonna injure my fingers with all that scrolling. Don't like it at all. Like somebody else said, too boring, all looks the same. But, it's a blog. A blog is a blog. Yawn.

 

[njchava]

when I got to a news site, its one of the few times i expect/want the site home to be jam packed with information and different news stories to read.


also the p text is wayyyy to light. its hard work to read that light gray against white.

 

[amnost]

Thanks for the feedback!

Are all of you referring the the text color of my posts (which color would be better, a darker gray or just black?), or something else as well?

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when I got to a news site, its one of the few times i expect/want the site home to be jam packed with information and different news stories to read.

My goal with the website was to give readers a break from that. It should feel refreshing to read site after all of the other blogs a person had just read. It delivers all of the most important news in a clean and simple way. I don't want to jam pack the homepage with an overload of info and news stories. I think that's what makes websites too confusing for some people, and a reader's eyes are just going to breeze by half of the cluttered info they'd be seeing. My website just has all of the news stories and a bar at the top with the top news stories. I made the website painless to read by including only 2 ads (of which are not intrusive in any way. Overall, my attempt was to make every single element you see, as clean as polished as possible. I went through every part of the website, down to the smallest buttons and links, and refined it all.

 

[amnost]

By the way, if you like the website, please be sure to bookmark it

 

[miles01110]

My goal with the website was to give readers a break from that. It should feel refreshing to read site after all of the other blogs a person had just read.

The problem with this line of thinking is that your blog is a no-name. It's one thing if TechCrunch wants to do something different - with your site people don't immediately see anything interesting to read and they leave (and probably won't return).

 

[jtara]

My goal with the website was to give readers a break from that. It should feel refreshing to read site after all of the other blogs a person had just read. It delivers all of the most important news in a clean and simple way..

What it delivers for me, on a maximized browser on a 1600x1200 screen, is three images at the top with fuzzy, barely-readable white-on-semi-transparent black headlines overlaid on the images. And a huge headline and video window for the first story. I have to go crazy on the scroll wheel to see anything else.

Frankly, it looks like a parking page.

What is your site about? Is there some unifying theme? Or just random tech new articles? Did you write the articles? If not, where do they come from?

I guess I just don't get it. There are a zillion general tech-news blogs out there, and maybe a half-dozen that actually matter to anybody, with a zillion "me-toos". Why another?

BTW, I'm not a designer. Just reacting as a user.

Now, at least you are avoiding going the other way and being TOO cluttered. But you've taken "simplicity" to an unusable extreme. I used to read news.com every day. They did a horrible, cluttered re-design maybe a year ago and I haven't been back since.

FWIW, I get almost all my tech news from Zite on my iPad any more. I don't even use websites directly for tech news. Zite (and similar apps) is the new RSS, but a lot better. (I went the RSS route for a while, then discovered what everybody else discovered. It's all the same news, over and over.)

 

[njchava]

for text on white, #333 is pretty standard.

for the design, try cramming a lot more content above the fold. a blog style list of articles isn't gonna cut it. internet surfers like to pick and choose, not read sequentially.

 

[r1ch4rd]

My goal with the website was to give readers a break from that. It should feel refreshing to read site after all of the other blogs a person had just read.

The problem is that having a jam packed front page works well. It means you can see a quick overview of everything in one go and then just jump to the stories that interest you. That gives you a bit of an idea of what is going on generally and then you can choose what to read. In a blog format, you have to read pretty much everything - whether you are interested or not.

I'm not so sure on the logo either - I just don't get it

 

[jtara]

I'm not so sure on the logo either - I just don't get it

Image

Can't you see? It's Pac-Man, rendered as a cut-out from a circuit board pattern, showing traces and through-holes.

You can't see the obvious relevance?

 

[DJLC]

Overall I like it. You just need some color and spacing tweaks. I'm not a fan of the logo; I don't see the connection, and it doesn't stand very well on its own. Also, your social networking / RSS icons are pixelated.

 

[amnost]

The problem is that having a jam packed front page works well. It means you can see a quick overview of everything in one go and then just jump to the stories that interest you. That gives you a bit of an idea of what is going on generally and then you can choose what to read. In a blog format, you have to read pretty much everything - whether you are interested or not.

I'm not so sure on the logo either - I just don't get it

Image

Can't you see? It's Pac-Man, rendered as a cut-out from a circuit board pattern, showing traces and through-holes.

You can't see the obvious relevance?

It's a circuit board pattern; minus the Pac-Man part

 

[amnost]

Overall I like it. You just need some color and spacing tweaks. I'm not a fan of the logo; I don't see the connection, and it doesn't stand very well on its own. Also, your social networking / RSS icons are pixelated.

I'm glad you like it.

The networking icons are intended to be semi-pixelated as part of their design.

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The problem with this line of thinking is that your blog is a no-name. It's one thing if TechCrunch wants to do something different - with your site people don't immediately see anything interesting to read and they leave (and probably won't return).

I definitely see what you're saying.

It's probably a little too late in the game for my website to not be a "no-name". But, I highly believe it could be possible to largely improve from that status.

I will attempt to differentiate from other websites as our frequency of content increases in the future. The best part is that it will be the all-in-one site (and already is right now, just without such a high content frequency), with news stories you'd find on The Verge, Engadget, Kotaku, and TechCrunch, on one website. The content will become even more in-depth, and the website will have constant reviews, news, videos, and more; across all of these different, yet related topics.

But in the end, I honestly just love getting to write all about these things I enjoy so much. Building a larger following to read these writings would simply make everything even better, and it's the direction I aim to take the website.

 

[amnost]

What is your site about? Is there some unifying theme? Or just random tech new articles? Did you write the articles? If not, where do they come from?

Tech Zang is an online news blog focused on tech and happenings in the world of consumer electronics. My staff and I write all of the articles ourselves. Sources for the articles are listed at the bottom of every article.

 

[wheezy]

I think you have a great start, but there are a lot of things you can fix.

The plain text "logo" at the top is taking up way too much space, and the circuit board logo isn't helping you. At all.

It's terribly inefficient with space usage. Big gaps, sidebar is awkwardly full but empty (the purposefully pixelly icons look like garbage)

Your articles/stories are current and relevant, so I don't think you're struggling too much with content.

The design is just really really loose and large, for not apparent reason. You can really tighten it up and get more content on the screen.

 

[amnost]

I think you have a great start, but there are a lot of things you can fix.

The plain text "logo" at the top is taking up way too much space, and the circuit board logo isn't helping you. At all.

It's terribly inefficient with space usage. Big gaps, sidebar is awkwardly full but empty (the purposefully pixelly icons look like garbage)

Your articles/stories are current and relevant, so I don't think you're struggling too much with content.

The design is just really really loose and large, for not apparent reason. You can really tighten it up and get more content on the screen.

Thanks for the advice.

 

[amnost]

Is the website showing up all right on Google for you guys?

 

[EvryDayImShufln]

Is the website showing up all right on Google for you guys?

works for me!

 

[avro707]

Yes, it's on Google okay.

Problem is that the design uses up too much screen-space vertically, while horizontally, there is a lot of blank space left and right on typical high-res screens.

I'd recommend doing some accessibility testing too using the Vision Australia accessibility tool for IE:

http://www.visionaustralia.org.au/ais/toolbar/

 

[amnost]

works for me!

Great!

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Problem is that the design uses up too much screen-space vertically, while horizontally, there is a lot of blank space left and right on typical high-res screens.

If I had it take up more space left and right, then people who don't have high-res screens are going to be scrolling left and right; and I definitely don't want anybody to ever have to do that. I used the recommended dimensions so that it would look great on an iPad or look great on someone's small display. Yet, it looks even better on a high-res display, despite some empty space. Apple does the same thing, as my website is the same dimensions as theirs. It allows universal compatibility so everyone can use your website with ease.