Dear Castanet,
I log on to your “news” website daily, and I find myself bombarded by ads, colours and different weights of text. I cannot even begin to fathom to where to start looking. I understand your need to have optimal space for advertising, but is there a need to overwhelm the user with at least 4 different flash ads on page load? What happened to the effectiveness or simplicity of static ads? Flash ads cause the user’s system to slowdown, and therefore creates an unnecessary load on your page. Oh, did I mention that most iPhone, iPad and mobile users don’t have flash capabilities?.. that’s just a minor detail considering that the web is now mobile and most viewers can see your website from anywhere on any device.
The colours of your page are bold, and bright! It almost looks like I’ve been brought to a child’s website given the colour scheme, I’m sure that your aim to appeal to all audiences was taken into consideration when you designed the front page. My 8 month old nephew likes the colours, my 3 year old dog, not so much. Maybe throw in some more yellow while your at it.
I admire the vast variety of sub-menus you have in your navigation bar, in the past 2 years of using this website.. I’ve clicked on only one menu… I have no idea what’s in the rest of them. What would be the logic in having so many sub-menus if you’re a news website? I take into consideration the fact that you’re also a community website, but do you really need that many sections and links on the page?
The 3 column layout of the website seems cluttered, again.. I understand your need for advertising space.. but you just don’t seem to have enough. Maybe put an ad across the top of the page, as well as another ad in the 1st column of your 3 column layout. The main photo on your website is not small enough, you should make it smaller and less prominent. oh, your headlines don’t blend in enough.. maybe you should add more videos and ads between the headlines so I can squint even harder to find them.
Speaking of your headlines, I feel like I”m reading the work of a remedial english student who has just discovered the thesaurus. A headline should be catchy, and reveal a small part of the story.. but hey, why not add a bit of a throw on the front page to the story to tease the reader? Oh, wait… that takes away from ad space.
As I scroll down the main page of the website, I can’t help but feel like I’m looking at the overcrowded bulletin board that hangs at a college. Poorly written content on a poorly designed canvas.
Oh Content… I could complain that you don’t have enough, but there’s so much here.. again, if I began clicking on every link on your front page, I would be here for hours upon hours. Therefore, I usually end up clicking nothing. I simply go to your front page… find the main headlines, read them.. and close the window. No advertising impression made, no reader gained.
I guess I hold out the hope that Castanet will take itself as a serious news publication with a great community focus and redesign their entire website… but that hasn’t happened yet, and I’m beginning to lose hope with the publication, if you can call it that.
I do often wonder, if maybe it’s the content that saves the poor design. Good reporting, great proofreading, limited typos.. articles that really speak to me… but even as I look on the website now, I see poor reporting.. an attitude of “get it up now and quick so we can be the first to publish the story”
Take, for example, this story about RIM (http://www.castanet.net/edition/news-story-66191-6-.htm#66191), a quote from the story goes like this (copied and pasted)
“A recent Castanet poll surveyed Blackberry users and of the 950 who responded, 65 percent said they have no planes to give up their phone.”
First off… Planes? I didn’t know we needed planes to give up our phones. Secondly, how does an online poll figure that those are the primary blackberry user base? Anyone can answer the poll, and those results are not proven, nor are they fact. The fact that Castanet chose to publish this story on the first day of Blackberry DevCon shows how shallow their research is when then begin the write stories. I may be biased towards Blackberry, but I don’t pretend to lie about the fact that I write a slanted personal blog. Castanet is a “news website” yet continues to buy into the media hype surrounding major stories, not only is RIM a Canadian company, but still a company that continues to sell products to various international markets. It’s as if Castanet has a major beef with a major tech company that not only put Canada on the technology map, but was one of the first innovators of the smart phone as we know it. If Castanet wants to put the slant on it’s columns, don’t present them as news.. present the site as an opinion site, and as such.. your audience will expect that.
The news reporting is sub-par on Castanet, it’s poor reporting results in a few quickly typed sentences that are neither cohesive or strung together with the proper verbage. Again, it’s as if they only worry about reporting it first, not reporting it right. A great deal can be said for proper sentence and paragraph structure, yes.. I know that online format is much different than a print format, but the journalistic standards should apply to the same situations. If a collision happens, don’t string together:
“An accident happened on street and avenue.
The accident involved 3 cars and a pedestrian.
Emergency personal are on the scene.
We will bring you updates.”
That snippet does not work for me. Try:
“An accident involving 3 cars and a pedestrian has occurred at the intersection of street and avenue. Emergency personal are working actively on the scene and it is advised to re-route your travels. Our reporter is en route to the scene and we will bring you more information as soon as it becomes available”
Doesn’t it sound more involved? More, newsworthy and informational? It presents the same information as the previous snippet, but creates a proper setting and format more akin to your Newspapers that you wish to replace.
I could go on, and on Castanet, but I feel like this would be far too much information to process such as the lack of local sports coverage (even obscure local sports like roller derby which is EXPLODING all over the Okanagan), your use of the iPhone as a media capture tool (a great deal can be said for proper usage of proper tools), using Youtube to host videos (a personalized video application makes your product look professional and polished).
I hope this letter finds you in good spirits, as it has lifted mine to be able to express my opinion and views on a website that should have MUCH more potential than the one I see every day.
Sincerely,
The Lancer Girl | Blair Block
