New Party Website - A different Point of View

12/08/2008

A blog is only an opinionated wittering of one or many.  With that in mind I have to say…

…I don’t like it.  By it, I of course mean the new Liberal Democrat main party site.

New Party Website

(Pic from Paul Walter)

Like Paul, I have had a little sneaky.  Unlike Paul, and it seems others, I don’t like it.  I had written why I don’t like it but thought I would wait for it to go ‘live’ first and allow everyone to see it before I slagged it off, so as not to prejudice you all.

I hope people do like it and I am wrong.

UPDATE:  James Graham makes a fair point in the comments:  If I am not going to say what I think the problem is, then why say anything at all?

I think it looks cheap.  That is the first word that came to mind when I opened it up.  It is just not a very good design.  I think they have added some very good features, but have pulled the whole thing down by not making it very good looking.  It may not seem much, but with all the other websites out there vying for attention, ours will still be a small voice in the wilderness.

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There are 10 comments in this article:

  1. 12/08/2008James Graham say:

    I’ve got to ask - why did you ask for a sneak preview if you never intended to provide constructive criticism and want to hear other people’s opinion first?

    If you have specific criticisms, don’t you think you at least have a chance of getting them changed if you talk about them now rather than later?

    At the very least, couldn’t you email your concerns to Cowley Street?

  2. 12/08/2008OneHourAhead say:

    Hi James,

    Fair enough points.

    I asked for a sneak preview because, well, I didn’t know how it was going to look and wanted to know. I had thought about how the site could be revamped and when Mark had said that they had done so, I thought ‘great, can’t wait to see it. show me. show me!’ Although I read minds for a living I am not psychic, I was hoping I could offer something constructive.

    But I was disappointed. Yesterday I wrote a long post about my problems with it but thought, this morning that maybe I was being a bit too harsh before everyone had had the chance to see it, so pared it down some. May be a bad idea in retrospect? I’m not waiting to hear other people’s opinions, I just thought that it would be better to wait and let other people see it before I said too much. Paul is for it, I am not so keen, so it is currently 1-1 and people can make up there own minds.

    As for contacting Cowley Street, I thought a) my concern with the site isn’t something that they are going to change i.e. it is the whole look of the design, not specific parts of it. The specific parts of it are okay, as I have put in my post that I will put up when it goes out to the general public, but I think they could have done better with the design. At this late stage that kind of thing is locked in. And b) it is purely an opinion. Isn’t that what blogging is about?

  3. 12/08/2008Mark say:

    I’m glad you like some of the new features!

    Design is often very much a take it or leave it matter, and people’s first reaction often is the end of the story, though for websites it’s worth bearing in mind that they also have to cater for regular visitors. Often a site that looks good (or bad) at first ends up appearing not so good (or bad) if you’ve visited it regularly over time.

    People also tend to have very disparate views, and even really bad/good sites will have some people who love/hate them so, as you touch on, we’ll have to see what happens when as larger groups of people give their views.

  4. 12/08/2008OneHourAhead say:

    Exactly Mark. I couldn’t (and obviously didn’t) say it better myself.

    The new features are good. news ticker, better links, citizen/journo/supporter box. The embedded video could be bigger though.

    But for me, IN MY HUMBLE OPINION, I just don’t like the design, and that spoilt it for me. Other people will and do like it and it is not something you would or should change now. I hope it does grow on me, it is just I was hoping for something different.

    Good luck with it though!

  5. 12/08/2008Paul Walter say:

    In fairness I ought to point out that I added a bit of peripheral soft focus to that picture, to give it a bit of “pre-launch mystique”.

    Paul Walters last blog post..Thar’s plastic in them thar hills!

  6. 12/08/2008Paul Walter say:

    Make that “pre-launch mystique” - though “pre-lunch mystique” also works - although “post-lunch” mystique would be better. I’m rambling.

    Paul Walters last blog post..Thar’s plastic in them thar hills!

  7. 12/08/2008OneHourAhead say:

    Guessed that’s what you meant - fixed it.

  8. 12/08/2008Aaron Trevena say:

    Meh.

    I can’t say I’m that impressed - the policy / briefing section is pretty much unchanged, the search bar doesn#t work in firefox and uses google (*sigh* - why do people with domain knowledge of a collection of documents never bother to (pay somebody to) write even a relatively simple search engine that uses that domain knowledge.

    The abstracts / summaries from the policy papers, etc are still way too brief (4 to 8 words, usually paraphrasing the, often already vague, title).

    The Right hand side of the website is too busy, and TBH looks like a low budget blog.

    Sorry mark.

    Aaron Trevenas last blog post..Why is the Lib Dem front bench so afraid of talking sensibly about drugs?

  9. 12/08/2008Tom Papworth say:

    Okay. It’s a bit washed-out orange and it is busy.

    But anything - and I do mean ANYTHING - is better than the current abomination.

    Tom Papworths last blog post..Lying in the national interest

  10. 13/08/2008Mark Pack say:

    Thanks for those comments Aaron.

    The comment about the policy paper teaser texts is a good one which I’ll pass on to the policy team.

    Not quite sure what you mean about the search using Google as the site search doesn’t use Google (but rather Ferret)?

    Tom: I think you’ve rather made my previous point about the diversity of views on most designs, as there are also lots of people who like the current design (and it’s come out pretty well in the surveys we’ve done) :-)

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