Yahoo.com
Purpose
Yahoo's redesign in four years was all about hitting users' interests and preferences, establishing more of the company's services as daily habits that "delight and inspire" users, and providing users with a more tailored and social experience in hopes they'll linger on the site. For that, the revamped homepage includes a customizable newsfeed with an infinite scroll. Users can make their experience more social by logging in with their Yahoo or Facebook ID, which will serve content shared by friends. As well as allowing you to specify topics of interest to display and see news shared by your friends. Users can share content on the page via e-mail, Twitter, or Facebook.
Roll
I was responsible for: leading the UI/Visual design of the US homepage and supporting for US media network, including best-in-class content experience for articles, videos, gallery content, blog, and sponsored content. Worked closely with the engineering team to build and verify responsive layouts. I was establishing design guidelines considering the languages of all countries and distributing them to designers and engineers around the world.Challenges
Yahoo attracted 365 million worldwide visitors, making it one of the most popular destinations on the web. Our goal was that the renovated homepage encourage our sizable audience to stick around and engage with the site. Therefore, we were done very carefully because it could confuse users.We've done several customer surveys worldwide, and we're amazed to learn that customers are afraid of change. The existing homepage was very outdated, but customers wanted to keep the layout they were familiar with. Some users even said they would go to another website if they saw the new homepage. The design team prepared an innovative and trendy design, but we faced the fact that we had to stop all progress and provide an intermediate version design in one month because we had to make users avoid confusion and stick around and engage with the site.
Result
We received criticism and disagreement after introducing the new design because users didn't know why we had provided an intermediate version to prevent confusion among users. However, it served as a bridge between the final version, introduced later, reduced user confusion, and kept our users on the site. We've received a lot of positive user feedback later. They stuck more around and engaged with the site because they received helpful information through the newly created apps on the page. Users said they shared articles quickly and experienced more social with their friends after logging in with Facebook ID.
With a customizable newsfeed with an infinite scroll, users spend 1.8 times more time on the site. According to the research firm ComScore Inc, the page attracted 392 million worldwide visitors last month, a 7 percent increase from 365 million at the same time the previous year.
Usability testing and decision making
We did a lot of A/B testing and came across a very interesting fact. Most users of Yahoo have set Yahoo as their browser's home page, and they have had high loyalty for a long time. There were also many customers who were familiar with the existing layout and had a fixed position and order of clicking when they opened a browser. They responded positively to the new design, but after a while they were comfortable with the old layout they were familiar with and showed a strong will to stay there. We compare these results with the number of clicks on the screen to determine the final design.
Unlimited content provided for users
Yahoo's revamped home page isn't a radical new look. However, we optimized it across various mobile devices, and there are enough changes that could make the website more addictive. The most significant switch will be how Yahoo determines which stories to show each visitor on the home page and how the information is displayed. Yahoo has developed more sophisticated formulas to determine which topics are most likely to appeal to different people so the news feed can be fine-tuned to cater to different tastes.The right side of the new home page was devoted to modules that call "Utility Apps." The modules have been configured for weather, finance, sports, friends' birthdays, video clips, and Yahoo's Flickr site for photos. Each one can be programmed to automatically show what a user wants to see, such as the weather in a specific city, information about certain sports teams, or the stocks in an individual's investment portfolio.
Next step
After successfully launching the intermediate version of the Yahoo home screen, we prepared the next version that supports more sophisticated customization and adds a trendy and simple visual design. In addition, we focused on improving their needs and usability by reflecting on the feedback received from users after launch.
