Robb Montgomery

I am a little conflicted about the redesign of the Las Vegas Sun Web site.

And boy, as a visual editor, it’s hard not to like a site design that seems un-tethered from the banner ad business model.

The place is clean and attractive - it clearly borrows many design cues that you will find on other sites like NYT.com - but unlike NYTimes.com, the LV Sun site is scaled for human consumption.

Scaled for human eyeballs much like The First Post is.

I have not found a strong community engagement section - and that leads me to a few other things I noticed once you get past how clean the template code is.

To my eye, they absolutely missed a few things in their multimedia behaviors that could turbocharge the new efforts.

For example:

1) Not letting their audience embed and (and thus virally distribute and amplify) their unique assets. (Crikey, even the WSJ allows video embeds . . .)

2) Not displaying the vital dynamic feedback (a.k.a displaying the number of views and other meta data in real-time. this is the pixie dust that makes a site feel alive. (What is the harm in telling a visitor how many other people are reading the same story right now? Or have read that same item today? Why not show us how many registered users are online? or show most recent reader comments, etc)

3) The designer assumes that online video users prefer their web video players to dominate their screen. I don’t know if this is arrogance or ignorance but there is no button I could find to shrink the size of the vids.

4) They do not allow visitors to rank or rate any media assets or stories.

5) They don’t allow people to register with their real names. e.g. Using a space in their user name.
I had to register as “Robb_Montgomery” instead of “Robb Montgomery” A little thing, perhaps, but a programming assumption that is counterintuitive to getting people to signup using their real names.

Click to enlarge.

In spite of all the success of proven viral distribution techniques — the developers also crippled critical behaviors that drive interactivity and a satisfying user experience. If you look closely a the “Menu’ section of a video - the embed icon is there as an option - it is just switched off, same with RSS feeds and Itunes)
Look, There are many things to like about this site from a visual perspective.
But, making a site pretty is just not enough anymore. There is a new paradigm and the promise of networked journalism presumes that the end-user is in charge of the experience.

I know - a bit harsh, but these are but a few of the fundamentals no news site can ignore when they revamp their sites. Online users will care more about how something works than merely how it looks.

You Tube, Digg, and The Guardian have all changed the game. This redux seems to ignore key audience expectations and that’s a risky game to play - even in Las Vegas.