Rediff has gone live with a redesign of the Rediff India Abroad page (targetted towards NRIs) for the past few months now. The reason they cited for the redesign is that majority of the usage for their site happens from mobile devices. And the new design makes things more accessible from a mobile usage perspective.
Now I dont know what the Rediff guys were really smoking, but I think that the redesign is a big step in the wrong direction. In order to accomplish their goal of making the site more ‘mobile friendly’, they have managed to horribly destroy the online user’s experience.
For a content heavy site like Rediff, the focus of the site needs to be on content – promote and easily allow the user to discover good content and thereby increasing the user’s engagement with the site. The new design not only makes it incredibly difficult to discover new content, but the landing page fails to excite the user with any eye candy as well.
I’m no usability expert, but based on the strategy / redesign, it seems that the Rediff guys who were in charge of the task arent either. What I dont understand is — why not provide a different url for mobile devices ? Or, why not determine the client at runtime and if found to be a mobile device, why not redirect to the mobile section ?
In an effort to make things uncluttered, Rediff has lost its mojo — I wont be surprised if this impacts the visitors / pageviews metric for the site.
What do you think ?
agreed, I always end up clicking on the link at the top that takes me to the India site. One more click to get to their website- not good usability
its not just a step back but i will say a walk back…its horrible in terms of user experience.
‘The reason they cited for the redesign is that majority of the usage for their site happens from mobile devices’
They could have easily kept two webpages as the welcome page for their site.One served for mobile users and the other for plain usage from a computers browser.
The new site doesnot look at all like a portal. Have a look at the interface of http://www.in.com, its really cool.
Yes you are right. While mobile is one of the prominent platforms for web in the near future, and I agree that there should be sufficient emphasis on that area. However, that shouldn’t be done at the cost of totally neglecting the current online userbase, which is still at large. The interface design of mobile hasn’t matured enough to have an entire portal catered to it. The desktop web is still the preferred device of accessing the content online.
The user experience could be refined by making the system adapt to the user by presenting the most appropriate design for that platform. Also, they could create applications specific to mobile, which leverages the device functionality and the user’s interests.
This is one of the early hiccups of the transistion from the desktop web to the mobile platforms and beyond. The current innovations in the mobile technology combined with the customer response would eventually decide the choices.
I browsed through the site and I loved the user experience. Its very easy on the eyes, in stark contrast to the ad heavy sites of indiatimes. IBNlive and IN show ads just when I read the news which is a huge irritation. In contrast, the page loads extremely quickly. Check the rediff money updates- they are very fast.
I agree that huge usability improvements will be needed but still, I think this might be a trend setting move.
nice thought.
Tia smith
Rediff lost its mojo long ago, when they started publishing more trash vs good quality articles and columns. Even before the revamp, the website looked like it had a few articles surrounded by a myriad of irritating ads. The redesign just made it even worse.
Any better alternatives to rediff for those who want to read the news AND juice? Suggestions are appreciated.
love them or hate them, rediff still remains as one of the top news destination for online users. Point is we might have hated the new UI but we dont have access to their internal stats and what actually work and what not. In a recent interview Ajit was mentioning about this new page and he also told this page is on a test ride right now and they are making changes to observe the user behavior with the changes.
it doesnt matter — the design is alienating even once-in-a-while users like me. besides – it just doesnt make sense – even if they are getting more traffic from mobile users, that doesnt justify revamping the entire site to be mobile friendly — if you think of it from that perspective, should other sites like bbc / nyt or whatever also do the same ?
The point is that they should have a separate mobile friendly redirection / url — and keep the web based ui as is.
I do agree with you….Rediff has lost its charm…..
With all humility, I think Rediff has erred in many ways here.
#1. The new design makes rediff look empty and incomplete … (There is http://www.rediff.com link above the logo on every page … white space after the content ends and footer starts … the menu in news looks like a place holder … even craigslist is more formal) I’d think there are other design to achieve “simple” and “un-clutter” look
#2. As far as I know 80% of people who visit rediff … go here for current updates and casual news. The constant flow of content as rediff updates and other uploads … is what pulls people multiple times a day … it’s like an addition for most people to keep checking rediff multiple times a day … such content is now kept many clicks away and no one looks for that. It’s impulsive stuff really.
#3. If Rediff wanted to promote other services like Video etc. menu with icons can do the trick … rather than make that the first thing on the left … when a minority come for that
#4. If Rediff wanted to show the power of the new multi-object search and promote the non-ext content they have … they could have easily show associated videos, comments, photos for every article … and slowly increase cross content navigation (like YouTube or SlideShare get u to go from one to the other)
The new look Sucks big time…for Pete sake this is a content centric site..I come to rediff for its content and that needs to be presented on the landing page…
Well if you dont agreee…you could always let the user decide what he wants to see but giving them the option to revert to old style…
The format which is the best for news reading is CNN
They have put the news in great format.
Also the new TOI format is better than rediff ( except for the quality of news)
i couldn’t agree more
Yes the new site is so bad that I had to choose another news provider.. I googled “rediff new site sucks” and landed into this link..
i agree with all of u
regards
prasad
http://www.tendertiger.com
rediff was best site but after redesign it became worst… previously used to visit site 4-5 times a day but now once or twice a week; also left using rediffmail…