TORONTO – The way people digest news is constantly changing and Globalnews.ca is evolving to give users a more friendly experience. Whether you are visiting us on a desktop computer, a tablet or a smartphone, we want you to be able to get the information you want and need in an easy-to-find, stress-free manner.
To find out how we could improve, we sourced a group of users of the site for their feedback and spoke with readers in our Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver markets. The information we received gave us a broader understanding of issues our readers were having with our previous design and allowed us to focus our efforts on creating a cleaner design with a much better navigation system.
With the launch of the Globalnews.ca refresh today, here are six of the big features we want to highlight for readers.
Easier navigation
One of the most common complaints we received during our user testing was that finding categories and show pages was difficult. To combat this, we have tightened up the upper half of the site and have blown out our individual category pages into a top navigation bar.
Show pages are now nestled under the TV News Programs dropdown menu and are presented in a much nicer carousel design.
Switching your location is also featured more prominently in the dropdown menu beside our main logo.
Sidebar gets “sticky”
As you scroll through the site the right-hand sidebar now scrolls with you, switching between our most popular stories and videos. This is called the “sticky widget” and will allow us to build upon it to give users more of the information they want and need than our previous static sidebar did.
Sort your news by recent, popular, or local/national stories
Users can now sort whether they want the most recent stories, most popular stories, or local news or national news stories to appear in the main news stream of the site. This allows each reader to truly have a personalized experience on our site.
Contests
We know readers love contests so we have given them a proper home, making them easier to find. You can select contests from the far-right of the top navigation bar or just browse to globalnews.ca/contests. Only contests for the region you’re set to will appear.
Better mobile experience
Globalnews.ca was one of the first major Canadian news sites to bypass releasing a dedicated mobile app in favour of a responsive design. This means that whether you’re on a smartphone or tablet, the site will adapt to your screen size and give you a proper viewing experience without the need to install additional software. The mobile experience is even better with our refresh and features enhanced navigation and allows breaking news to be displayed more prominently. You can also add Globalnews.ca to your iPhone or iPad home screen by selecting the “Add to Home Screen” prompt the next time you visit.
Bigger, friendlier weather
Our weather widget that appears near the top-right is bigger and friendlier, allowing you to quickly see the forecast for your region. The weather pages have also been updated with more information, including a five-day forecast and radar images. More enhancements to our weather section will be rolling out over the next few months that will make the experience even greater.
These are just some of the many tweaks we have made to the overall experience of Globalnews.ca with our latest refresh. Users can expect better search capabilities, traffic updates and smoother video integration in the coming months.
If you have a comment or suggestion on how Globalnews.ca can be better, please fill out the form below.
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