The Drubbing

As expected, ESPN.com, the website of the worldwide leader in sports, launched a redesign today. ESPN has long been known for fantastic design for both their online properties as well as ESPN The Magazine. They’ve also proven themselves to be very forward-thinking and progressive when it comes to their online ventures. I’m not sure if this one makes the grade.

The home page of the January 2009 ESPN.com redesign

Redesigns often come up against two problems. People generally resist change, so they’re naturally inclined to dislike a new website, even if the changes are minor, and they loved the old website. The other is running the risk of fixing/breaking elements of the site that aren’t already broken. I think the new ESPN.com will encounter a bit of both.

The initial things that caught my eye on the new design is that they moved from a left-aligned layout to a layout that’s centered in the web browser, smaller logo, simplified navigation, the scoreboard has replaced the banner ad at the top, there are lots and lots of ads now (designed to generate more revenue) and the typography blends together an awful lot.

I think the site still has a bit of “clean-up” work to be done, but I expect the initial response to be overwhelmingly positive. ESPN seems to have cleaned the site up a lot and has put a greater focus on the quality of content where the focus used to be put on the quantity of content.

The biggest change of all may be the one that everyone can agree on. No more automatic playing videos. The sports gods will certainly rejoice for that one.

The home page of the 2008 version of ESPN.com

The second biggest change I expect will be their improved search function. The old one sucked, as ESPN admitted, and that could go a long way to help users find the content that they were used to seeing tacked onto the home page like a cork board in the office break room.

You can expect to see more about the redesign on the sites of ESPN.com’s developers like Steve Clancey. You can tour the redesign in this video, supplied by ESPN.com.

Update: Mike Davidson has posted a lengthy and great review of the new ESPN.com. And one of his readers, noted that the section main pages for the individual sports, like the NFL landing page, still has auto-play videos. Make it stop!