My wife reads the Times of India online edition. Every day. And every time she goes online. She reads it not because it is free, but because it is the only way she can. (If we were living in India, we would have subscribed to the print edition without blinking. In fact, we did during the years we spent in India after we were married.) It hurts to see her undying loyalty in spite of its crappy online edition.

This post is an open call to the (Indian) news media that reveled in print, but fail to bat my eyelids in their online editions. This post is dedicated to loyalists like her.

This is a Why? Do you care? How do we? kind of post, rant, dig or whatever you want to call it. But if you are an online media publisher and if you have even the slightest concern about improving your readers’ experience, then I am sure, you will sideline my occasional prick, and take heed. Alright, let’s begin the dissection. Where’s that scalpel?

Why? — Yes, we will start from this. This basic introspection sets the tone for the rest. Without the why, you wouldn’t bother to read the rest of this.

Because:

• You are making it harder to read your stories.
• You are making your ads more important than your story.
• You have a total disregard for the old and the disabled.
• You are hurting your readers.
• Your design and table mark-up takes a lot more time to load.
• You are treating and managing print and online versions alike.
• Your data is much less future proof.
• You are most certainly paying more than you should be.

Do you care? — Well, that is for you—the online media publisher—to decide. If you do, then forget my rant and do something about it. Let me tell you why you should care though:

You are the conventional media. People do trust you as a credible source. Honor that trust. Give it back to your loyals, and notice how it will bring-in more loyals and readers in the process. If you don’t, readers have no problem switching, to another one, at the click of a button.

Be prepared to face problems—Like the effect of homeopathic medicine, it is going to get worse before it gets better. You are going to face many problems initially. Such as:

• Transferring archives from the past.
• Broken links and references.
• Editorial staff may have to need to re-learn the technical details of adding and updating content.

Is it all worth it? You bet. It’s a one-time investment that will make your site future proof, especially if your site still looks like a retro page from the late 90s.

How do we? — Glad to know that you’re still with me. Once you get over the inertia and accept that there is a need for improvement, the rest is not so difficult. You take the first step that leads to a hundred always. Let me try to dissect the problems, that dog the online news media and explain with examples, in my limited capacity, on how best to overcome those. And believe me, there are enormous benefits to be reaped out of this, not only for your readers but also for you as the publisher.

Making it easier to read your stories

Let us start with the existing problems and find solutions for those first, before going on to what the web is buzzing about these days and how can it benefit you and your readers.

Problem: The clutter — The website is so massively cluttered. Mashed-up. Chaotic. A complete disarray. It is as if you are in the perception of running out of space on your front page. Take a hard look at these sites: Times of India, Indian Express, Deccan Herald, The Hindu, and you’ll know what I mean.

Solution: You have to bear in mind that your online edition is not running out of front page space. Bring some homogeneity in the way you present your stories. Make the presentation easy on the eyes. When eyes encounter a tight frame, they perceive chaos. White spaces can do wonders. Don’t do pigeon hole slotting of stories just because everyone else is doing it. Look at BBC, The Onion (and also Khoi Vinh’s post about its design), DNA India for examples. They all have a way of presentation. Each one is different, better, elegant. They also have a nice flow.

Problem: The ads — They show-up left, right and center. They are annoyingly everywhere. They are trying to hustle the readers for a click, but people hate intimidation.

Solution: You can actually make people click your ads. But it is not by making them flashy. Flashy and cheap colors are repulsive. Change that. Accept ads that are decent and tastefully done. Keep them un-obtrusive on a separate panel. Don’t include them within the flow of your story. Treat the ads you serve just like your story. Design for their space too. Prominent but one that is not in the way of your stories.

Problem: The pop-ups and pop-unders — Did you know that it is a sin to have a pop-up? 90% of your pop-ups will not be seen, thanks to today’s browsers.

Solution: Pop-ups are next most hated scum on the internet, only after the unsolicited junk commercial email. Do not accept ads that have pop-ups or pop-unders. Find some space on your front-page that can show these elegantly, rather than force them upon your hapless readers.

Problem: Pagination — Each of your stories are paginated, spanning as many as 5 to 10 pages. One paragraph per page. How annoying! Longer load times, lost reader interest.

Solution: I am sure it is quite alluring to serve more ads per story, but why paginate? You could easily accomplish that by serving ads alongside the story in their separate space. Don’t you think?

Problem: The frames — They break the homogeneity, not to mention security problems.

Solution: Get rid of frames. Simple. Put all content on the page, instead of sneaking in from behind.

Problem: Navigation — Another mass of left sidebar clutter. Confusing, lacks hierarchy and structure.

Solution: Get a structure on how information should flow in place. Brainstorm with your team on a white board to get the best flow of information presented on your website. Try going back and forth a couple of times on links and you’ll notice the pitfalls. Correct them. Order the flow in a top-down manner. Use breadcrumbs or top navigation bars for major topics.

Problem: The URL (permanent internet address to your story) — Undecipherable URLs add to the mess. No human can type the URL of your particular story even if she wanted.

Solution: Getting a nice URL could solve a lot of structure related problems and would help navigation. Simple, nice, readable and short URLs are a must have. If have a Cricket story, would you prefer it this way: http://newssite.com/articleread/45968.cms, or this way: http://newssite.com/sports/cricket/45968. You decide.

Now to that buzz

Until now, we only looked at how to solve the existing problems. No real improvements other than getting the basics right. Having said that, just the basics themselves would probably work wonders. But there is room for improvement. Think of enhancing user experience than just serving your news. That is the buzz.

There are a variety of techniques used—but all towards making the reading experience richer. Let’s talk about those.

The web is, by nature, dynamic. By adopting this in your design, you can elevate the experience drastically with simple techniques, and get this, make savings while you’re at it.

What are those techniques?

Compliance to web standards: This by itself will not help improve the experience, but will become a stepping stone towards it.

Cascading style sheets: This is a style guide to your elements that appear on your web page. When you set global parameters such as font-size, font-type, margins, spacings, weight, line-height, etc to all the elements in your page, you have a better control. Style sheets reduce your page clutter, drastically reduce load times. They also reduce your bandwidth. Saving in bandwidth directly translates in to money saved (see Throwing out the tables by Douglas Bowman). Style sheets keep styling separate from the story content. They give you the ability to change the effect of elements globally across the site, when just one parameter is changed.

End user control: Different readers have different requirements. Some like to read small letters, others have a harder time reading. So, one font size cannot be for all. Give your users the required control so that they can adjust to their needs. This can be achieved via a technique called “style switching”.

Accessibility: I have not much to say than point you to a wonderful, wonderful article called Dive into accessibility written by Mark Pilgrim.

DOM: With DOM, you can add pseudo-dynamic effects to enhance the user experience. Simple things like expand and collapse from excerpt to a full story.

XML or feed (RSS/Atom) syndication: It is nice to see that most have this already, either by virtue of the content management suites they use or by manual design. But, if you serve summary of your stories instead of the full story via feed, then the user still has to go to your website to read the entire story and we’re back to square one.

AJAX: A combination of server side scripting, javascript and extensible markup language XML–known more popularly as AJAX–help further improve your user interface and design for that extra shot in the arm. You can supercharge your search, add pizzazz to the user interface, while reducing the burden on your servers at the same time.

Have I lost you already? I guess, I must have. But, don’t sweat. You really don’t have to know the nuts and bolts of any of this. Just hire somebody (fresh minds) or a team of them and lay down your requirements. That’s what this post is meant for.

Alright, that’s it. I’m done.

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