Why Does That Still Look Like This?
Yes, another episode in my never-ending quest to make companies, large and small, realise how important website design and organisation are!!!
I started subscribing to the Wall Street Journal online in October of 1997. I'll do nearly anything to save a tree :) and I wanted to keep up with financial and business news that affects my company. The site included the "Personal Journal," which let you customise three types of information: News, Favorites, and Portfolio. Portfolio tracks your stocks (just like you guessed). News lets you create categories and assign keywords and industries for blocks of custom news. Favorites lets you pick which regularly running WSJ columns you'd like to track. Sounds nice, and was fairly hip for 1997.
The layout was very simple. The "Setup Center" let you control all three areas plus your subscriptions and settings from one page. The appearance lacked colour (in a big way), had nearly zero graphics, and every single button was a form button (for those of you unfamiliar with that term, that's buttons like all of the "SUBMIT" and "SEND" buttons you see that all look the same). The banner ads are lovely, but the site's own graphics (like the spotted grey masthead) look rather poor in quality/optimisation. Again, in 1997 this site and its features were still fairly cool, but what did I find when I visited it in February 2001?
I had never really used the Personal Journal area; I mostly read the "front page" and the "tech center," which has barely changed its appearance for as long as I've known it. So when I went and looked at my Personal Journal pages in February 2001, I was surprised to find that nothing had changed at all except the copyright date. That's right, the sad looking masthead, the unappealing interface... all still there. What does it look like? Click here to view a screen shot of my News page showing Internet headlines. This was taken on 20 Feb 2001, and is supposed to only be a partial screen (so don't write me asking where's the rest of it - isn't this enough?).
The Wall Street Journal. One of the most famous and most respected papers. And this is their personalised content area. My feelings about the site's appearance and layout are fairly obvious, especially to those who have read my columns on this general issue. One would think that they have the budget to redesign the site, ESPECIALLY after it looking like this for over three years. These people obviously have money. How do I know? Because the paid subscription still exists to the tune of $49 per year when many other local, national, and international newspapers (such as the San Jose Mercury News) have eliminated paid subscriptions because they were unsuccessful. WSJ has the money (I'm just guessing) to make the interactive personalised area for online subscribers maybe not everything we've ever dreamed of, but certainly a lot better than it is. Meanwhile, I wonder what percentage of paying online subscribers use the Personal Journal regularly, and what percentage would use it with feature and appearance changes. We'll never know! :)
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