The redesign is coming on apace, so I thought it was time for you to have another peek at the latest incarnation of the home page. Do remember this is still very much a work in progress, and you’re only seeing an illustrative image of what it looks like, rather than a built HTML version. There are still quite a few more tweaks to make.
One of the major redesign keys is the navigation structure. I’m sure you’ll spot the ‘tequila sunrise’ navigation buttons at the top. Each of these sections is now divided into up to three sub-sections e.g. Travel and Transport is, unsurprisingly, divided into a Travel section and a Transport section. And there will be a clear path to help people work through to exactly what they’re looking for. We’ve also done some mock ups of how the articles look in the new structure, and it’s much cleaner.
It’s a very difficult balance redoing a site like MSE. I very much don’t want it to look corporate, or have the same feel as one of the commercial money sites. Yet at the same time it needs to be clear and easy to use. There’s a lot more white space than in the current incarnation of the site, but hopefully not too much that it blends into the monotony of current web design trends.
Behind the scenes the site is coming on well, we’ve started building the background machinery, but there’s still a lot more work to do. One of the next steps is looking at the forums, though actually there will probably be less change there than anywhere else.
After that we’ll be ready to get a site user panel up and running to go through and give proper feedback – but until then I wanted to keep you updated.
For more details of the planned redesign (and previous incarnations) read this blog and this blog
