Website Critique: Gazzetta.it (Sports News Website)

Gazzetta.it front page

1. First Impressions

The first impression is two-fold.

Firstly, the site is visually cluttered. The very top has links to a number of Italian media outlets, then the Banner with a number of navigation tools, and then the first story.

Secondly, the colour scheme revolves mainly around the colour pink.

This is important, as La Gazzetta is the only pink newspaper in the country, instantly recognizable and highly valued as a source of information on all sports (though mostly football).

The fact that the colour scheme has carried through evokes the same trust in the website.

It’s been pointed out that there are too many shades of pink, and that the grey and orange links (multimedia and text, respectively) don’t match, but personally I find the colours work well with each other, despite perhaps not being all coherent.

There are a lot of links on the page, but and while they look cluttered and thick, they are also consistently organised.

There is not that much free space and a lot of text, unlike award-winning sites like Flickr and Facebook.

While there is a certain amount of multimedia and live feeds on the right, the right hand side of the very long page is cluttered by ads and links to things, like online games, far removed from Gazzetta’s normal beat.

2. Writing

The front page does follow Nielsen’s “F-rule”, the first story and live feed taking up the upper part of the F, the second most important section (a toolbar on all Italian serie A football teams) located on the second “F” and all the stories placed vertically on the left.

The writing is exceptional, as La Gazzetta only hires the best sports writers in the country, of whom there are plenty. However, it is not structured very well. There are subtitles, but no paragraphs, so articles look like they are four different walls of text.

The first paragraph is indeed bold, and there is a picture after it, but it does not follow the F-shape suggested by Nielsen.

The whole lay-out of single articles is very vertical, dense and requires a lot of scrolling, and this should be changed to allow for easier reading.

An article page within Gazzetta.it

There are no links within the articles themselves, but there is a bar on the left with links related to the story.

The vast majority of links are internal, but then, the website is so famous in Italy it need not link out to up its google rank.

I doubt anyone even looks for La Gazzetta on google, as everyone knows what the url is.

3. Content

There is plenty of space dedicated to multimedia on the website.

There is a link on the right to La Gazzetta’s own online TV service (which doesn’t have a broadcast equivalent) with a useful toolbar with a wide variety of videos to watch, from football round-ups to interviews to gossip.

The content is mainly based around football and only superficially cover most other sports, but there are many multimedia contributions.

La Gazzetta has many exclusive interviews, and often hosts videochats with sport personalities when users can type in questions and the interviewee can answer live.

Blogs are present, but they are fairly hard to find and are not a major selling point of the website.

On Sundays, or during important games, La Gazzetta has a live minute-by-minute coverage page for every game played, with plenty of statistics, round-ups and comments.

The live-coverage page during a serie A game

They cannot show live video due to broadcasting rights, but for many football gans, especially abroad, this is the next best thing.

Users are allowed to comment, but the commenting format does not encourage one to read through all the posts.

There is also a section to the website entirely in English, a direct translation of all the best articles on the site.

Ultimately, La Gazzetta is the best source for information on Italian sports, unrivalled in its accuracy and scope of coverage, especially in football.

4. Navigation

The navigation is consistent throughout the website, but also consistently disorganized and clunky.

At the top of the front page is a number of drop down menus with their own sub-menus which, while intuitive, are so large and take up so much space that navigating on them covers a great deal of the headlines below.

Within article pages, navigation is quite handy.

On the right is a toolbar with links to related stories, both background pieces and “other side of the coin” pieces, and links going back to the sports game or event mentioned in the story.

Also on this toolbar, which isn’t present on the main website, are a list of the most read articles in the last day, week and month.

This is a great tool, and I fail to see why it isn’t included in all pages, much like timesonline.co.uk.

The front page does have a rolling “latest news” section, but that is actually below the fold, as are all the articles apart from the headlining one.

On the right, the button which takes to a list of games being covered minute-by-minute is constantly present.

This is good because it is the first feature many users will look for, and it’s in the F-shape advocated by Nielsen, but it is useless when there are no games being covered.

Conclusion: The website is well designed, but badly organised. Good designs, colour schemes and excellent news and multimedia initiatives are all good in themselves, but they need to be reshuffled and reorganized for optimum use.

CRITIQUE: TRINIDAD EXPRESS

Trinidad & Tobago Express is one of the three daily newspapers in Trinidad & Tobago. Trinidad does not have a distinction between broadsheet and tabloid formats, and the Express is a well-respected newspaper. It commenced in 1967 and registered its website www.trinidadexpress.com in 1997.

Of the three dailies, its website is the most frequently linked to, with 119,786 references as at 13/12/08 according to www.marketleap.com

First impressions… ad-attack and ‘huh?’-galore

At first click, the website’s animated ads on the homepage leap out at the viewer.

Like many other Trinidadian newspapers and websites such as its rival newsday.co.tt, trinidadexpress.com places heavy emphasis on the national colours of red, white and black.

The whiteness gives it a nice, clean layout that enhances readability, and the redness of the tabs for links and as backgrounds for headings works well against the black text.

However the blue flashing Clico ad in the middle of the banner on the homepage jars with that notion immediately: blue signifies UK – the source of former colonisation, and US – the source of cultural saturation, two countries citizens try to maintain a particular distance from when it comes to national identity.

Granted, the site needs ads – but the position of this one is in poor taste considering its colour scheme:

 

As the eye skims down the page, it is assaulted with more ads, most of them flashing.

Though the website obeys the rule of thirds, the entire far right column is dedicated to ads – not to mention those interspersed in the middle column.

If you open any news article, there is a vertical column of “Ads by Google” in the middle of the screen right where you are reading the story, which is very distracting.

Ad in the middle of the page next to the story

 

On the homepage, only two stories — the main one and one other — have pictures to go with them.

After every story, the website states “there are 0 community-posted events. Click to read” – this is redundant.

Underlining links would be sufficient instead of directing the viewer “click to read” endless times, and “community-posted” is also unnecessary.

There is no multimedia whatsoever evident from the front page (and this site is owned by the same company that owns a TV Station, so video should theoretically be available…)

There are links to One Caribbean Media Limited and to the 2008/09 Budget and to the draft constitution of the country – commendable, perhaps, as this reflects the interests of citizens in the economy and national identity, BUT not necessary to have at the top of the page, especially before the navigation.

Navigation… where oh where do I go from here?

The website, operated by One Caribbean Media, functions for both Trinidad Express and CCN TV6.

But available information on TV6 is poor: when you click on TV6 (way down on the left), you are directed to a page that offers TV6 features, and clicking on that brings you to a page that is virtually blank:

 

For no explicable reason, on the homepage there are links to webcams showing views from the newspaper’s offices (seemingly only there to advertise for the sponsor, Chancellor’s Hotel).

Even worse, when you click on these links, one of them is so fuzzy it makes you think your eyesight has gone wonky, and apart from the other one being almost pitch black, it also shows Independence Sq. as at 21/10/07 (we are now in December 2008!) though according to accompanying text, it refreshes every 5 minutes from 6:00AM-6:00PM.

 

The search bar is virtually invisible – you have to scroll down significantly in a quest for the search bar:

VOILA!!!!! EUREKA!!!!! SEARCH BAR!!!!

 

The search facility is poor:

• You must specify a date range to get anything beyond the most recent articles.
• When you search for something, automatically-generated results render the majority of the page white.
• The results show only the headline, date and article number. The article number is irrelevant and all that white space can be used more effectively, e.g. photos and/or an opening sentence to explain what the article is about.

 

There is also duplication of links:

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• The navigation of “Business”, “Sports”, “Letters”, “Features” etc is on the left and also on the bottom of the page.

• On the left, there is a link to “E-paper”; on the right a photo link “Subscribe to our e-Edition”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The main navigation, however poorly placed, is commendably consistent as you click through — both the bottom-page and left-side navigation.

 

Writing… hitting the text-wall

The writing follows Jakob Nielsen’s rules in some aspects.

With the writing falling in the middle column of the screen, it does not have too many words across one line of text, usually around 6-8.

However, it does not fully obey the “F-pattern” of writing: some sentences are much too long, and some are grouped together unnecessarily, leaving chunks of text:

Chunks of text: not 'scannable'

This should be broken up, and in some instances it can be placed in bullet-point or list format such as the last paragraph of the story above.

There are also no clickable hypertext links within the wall of text. Hypertext indicates that the writer has done proper research for the claims the article makes, and has looked at other sources that he/she is happy to have the reader consult for verification.

There is also no list of articles that many be connected to the one you are reading. This results in the reader losing interest after that particular story — whereas the point of a website is to keep the reader within the web of information.

It also does not embolden the first sentence; most websites such as the BBC do this.

There are no sub-headings between the main body of text of the article, and some sentences are much too long.

It appears as though stories have been copied verbatim from the paper format.

 

Content… Web 2.0?

On the plus side, the font used throughout the site is Arial which is a web-friendly Sans Serif font.

In line with the Web 2.0 world that offers users to share content, when reading an article there is the option to “Email to a friend”. There is also a “View printable version” option.

Though it allows for interaction with its audience via “community-posted comments”, www.trinidadexpress.com  does not qualify as 2.0 website because of its lack of multimedia.

The lack of subheadings and clickable links within the text of the story, as well as the absence of connected stories, may cause the reader to lose interest.

Its overall structure is poor, some of its content is very outdated, it is bogged down with ads, and it depends too heavily on the print format.

It seems as though not much thought was put into its design — for example, for usability, the first thing should be to move the search bar to the top, such as with other news sites, including its rival newsday.co.tt:

 

Main suggested improvements:

• Its search bar needs to be wider, more visible, and at the top (not a tiny square far down the page).
• Its navigation should be placed at the top like the Guardian and the Times, or at the left side directly under the banner like the BBC.
• It should also be sectioned into more categories than the navigation links it presently has, e.g. adding in “Lifestyle”, “Politics”, “Education”, “Science & Technology”, “World News” etc.
• There should be more photos — and larger ones.
• There should be a much better organisation of stories than the list at the bottom with no categorised structure or date of the articles.
• There should be hypertext links, connected stories, and also “killer quotes” extracted from the text
• There should be less ads and more news-related multimedia.
• There should also be blogs — the inkling of this idea does not seem to have crossed the minds of the designers.

It is surprising that this is the most popular news site in Trinidad, but this can be attributed primarily to the paper format, which has prospered throughout the years.

The main plus about the site is the snapshot of the paper-edition’s front page, which is also done by the websites for the two other Trinidad dailies.

As a Trinidadian living abroad, I know exactly how much those that belong to the diaspora scattered around the globe enjoy looking at the front page to feel closer to home.

Background Story: Loneliness Aggravated in London

As an international student studying in London, you not only contribute to the multiculturalism of this vibrant city, but also you make this city lonelier than it was.

30% Londoners Feel Lonely

Based on the analysis of census data from 2001, 1991, 1981 and1971, a report conducted by researchers at Sheffield University showed that community life in UK has weakened.

Big Ben symbol of London Picture by Lei Yang

30% of Londoners in the survey said that they felt lonely.

The BBC-commissioned research revealed that divorce, immigration and large transitory student populations have played a role in weakening neighbourhoods bonds in London.

“Life in London is rather hectic and busy, where we barely have time for ourselves so it not surprising that so many people out there feels as they don’t belong to a community.”

Sham from County Harrow commented on the results discovered by the BBC.

Economic Gap

The researchers analysed the number of people living alone, those in rented accommodation and those who did not live in one place for more than one year.

London has continuously topped the chart with most lonely people in the UK since late 1960s.

It was found that the UK had become far more separated, with regard to age, economic status and other factors, over the last four decades.

The report also presumes that loneliness of Londoners might be partially due to the gap between poor and rich in the city.

London has the highest levels of people living under the relative poverty line in 2001-32% of Londoners.

“The polarisation and segregation processes may also lead to stronger feelings of isolation.”

Professor Daniel Dorling, who headed the research team at the University of Sheffield told BBC reporter.

Researchers found out that London is not yet the most lonely city in UK, which ranks after Edinburgh，the one at the top of the list.

Charleston and Red Bull- It’s a Christmas party!

Ass grabbing, photocopying genitals, lampshade on heads, gravy- covered beer guts, flashing ties and illuminated reindeer earrings- those are well- known signs of Christmas as thousands of offices around the country get their Christmas parties into full swing.

Bury The Lead got invited to Red Bull’s staff Christmas bash in Shoreditch this weekend- only to find those treasured Christmas rituals to be out of fashion.

Slick doorman welcomes slick guest. Photograph: Karoline Hjorth

Hidden in the epicentre of East London’s Hipstertown, Village Underground is far from paper- clothed buffets and Christmas carol karaoke bliss.

Popping out from their ping pong- tabled meeting rooms and playground built office spaces, staff from all over the country have come to celebrate another hard working year for the pushers of nonalcoholic caffeinated liquid.

Catwalk- strutting waiters welcome the 300 guests with their brightest colgate smiles, trays of finger food and cocktails that “give you wings“.

“Mince pie? Sorry darling, but have a canapé and get yourself a champbull“.

Hundreds of twenty- and thirty-somethings get their smiles fixed with Champagne and Red Bull coktails as they enter the 1920s- style dancehall, designed to escape a glooming economical horizon.

Drink up and dance

Just like any other Christmas party the inhouse entertainment have a clear party boosting strategy:

“We’ll give those dancing shoes a few rounds in the open bar…”

Just as the mind wanders off to images of  MDs revealing their inner moonwalk passion, Leila MacMillan’s dance ensemble pull us back to Red Bull reality:  “…and  then we’ll get the Charleston going”.

Ella Robson demonstrates how charleston is the new moon walk. Photograph: Karoline Hjorth.

Ella Robson is one of the six dancers hired to get the crowd moving, and after hours of rehearsing it is too tempting to ask what keeps her going:

“No, I don’t drink Red Bull but I am on a constant diet of coffe, cigarettes, apples and vodka”, she explains.

Make- up artist Malika Causier paints her lips red and sends her out to tease the minglers.

Blondes, Madonna and the roaring twenties

The credit crunch might ravage the nation, but penny- pinching is not an issue when Red Bull goes festive.

Where other companies trust their loyal staff to book  tables at the local pub, Red Bull trust Blonde Productions to do their party planning.

Blonde Productions sisters Lora and Alex Lutostanska get a final touch from the make- up artist. Photograph: Karoline Hjorth.

Managing director Lora Lutostanska and her sister Alex are used to throwing parties and have organised events for Madonna, BBC and MTV.

“This is our second Red Bull event and the 1920s theme goes really well with some of Red Bulls 2008 campaigns, says Lora.

“It’s been fun”, she confirms before sliding into the crowd.

Despite eager observation Bury The Lead could not spot a single air guitar performer nor hear ”Last Christmas”  being played once.

A trustworthy source has it DJ Curly Perm, in love with himself and his impeccable cream suit, has been made redundant and replaced by wild-and-woolly 1920s jazz and The Correspondents.

On the hunt for fake mistletoes, snogging employees and general misbehavior, Bury the Lead ends up at a table where the hip crowd is playing blackjack.

One of the women is sipping a yellow-colored drink, and the question  is unevitable: “Is it eggnog?”

A moment of innocent Christmas party spirit lights up the room until the sipping red lips reply: “Honey, it’s bellini. Do you want some?”

Click here to go to the background story: Background: The anti- brand