Lincolnshire Echo tries multimedia. Still no luck…

During one of my usual nocturnal web-surfing sessions I ran into one of Lincolnshire Echo’s pages. I didn’t consider Echo’s website cutting edge and I’m not changing my opinion any time soon. The page brought to discussion is a news page from the 1st of April about the Lincoln Comedy Festival. Surprisingly, I found at the bottom of the page two embedded YouTube videos of comedians performing at the festival. Still, I couldn’t help myself noticing the poorly design state of the page.

So what is wrong here?

Skipping the cluttered layout of the page, with way to many categories aligned on the left hand side, I will get straight to the point:

* On a single page there are 6 adverts displayed, out of which 4 are for a single campaign (Royal Air Force). To make it even more hilarious, two of them (the skyscrapers on the right) are for the same campaign;

* The combined width of the skyscraper ads, together with the space between them, does not match the with of the advert placed above, making the page look clumsy (even though the advert under the skyscrapers matches their width);

* Placing an advert in the page header is totally acceptable and commercially viable, but placing one in the page’s footer is quite irrelevant, as most users will not scroll all the way down. Also, on certain pages, some Yahoo ads show up also. Still, at least the page is centred around RAF adverts;

* Coming back to the multimedia site, embedding YouTube videos in an article is something all content publishers should look forward to, but at least don’t make silly mistakes. In our case, I am talking about the few lines of code left just before the videos. It makes it look very unprofessional;

* I still think that the size of the photos Echo displays in their articles is more suitable for a thumbnail rather than a whole article. They should have at least double the size;

* Asking users to make the page their home page (top, left) is quite 90s style, taking in consideration that Echo offers RSS feeds. They should be placed somewhere higher on the page, with a bigger emphasis. Also, Echo does not offer full RSS feeds, but does it in the old school BBC style, with snippets, redirecting to the article’s page. Wrong decision, as nowadays RSS feeds can be monetised easily, and their visitor stats can be effortlessly monitored;

* The search bar (center, above article title) is ridiculously large, and to be a bit mean, the Yahoo! logo next to it is the same size as the newspaper’s logo in the header. No need for that. A simple code tweak would have been able to remove that.

What could be done?

Lots. Here are some examples:

* Totally redesigned homepage, with more microsites (like EchoSport) and a single central news page with links towards the microsites.

* Larger graphics, with more photos, video, and slideshows (the current ones are a joke)

* Less (obvious) advertising. The fewer advertising options would be more expensive, and text only with pay per click advertising would be more relevant, as (if) the visitor statistics rise.

* Some newspapers have to understand that the online public is not the same as the one of the printed version. This means that the full articles should be posted on the website, as soon as they go to print. This will not affect the declining sales, as these are caused by global trends.

* Full fledged RSS feeds, together with partner podcasts, also publicised and made more visible.

* Geotagging, for a more comprehensive local reporting, together with interactive maps and graphs.

* Staff blogs, updated frequently (I appreciate though the association with local bloggers, and the possibility to send in pictures via email of picture messages).

There are many other things to mention, but if they want to know more, they can hire me.