A look at MSNBC.com

First off, my apologies for again not getting to the "door post". I promise that one is in the works and I will get the required photos taken this weekend.

In the meantime, let's take a look at a very popular news site and discuss what works and what could be improved.

As you can tell, the site is MSNBC.com. This site has long been my go-to source for news and it's usually my homepage. The reporting may tend to be a bit biased at times, but you will have that with every news source since it's all written by humans with emotions. 

I've kept coming to this site because it it well done from a usability perspective. For example:

• Excellent use of white space, so the user doesn't feel overwhelmed.
• Images are well-proportioned to the page and adds to the content rather than distract from it.
• Sub-navigational elements are well designed and implemented.

Once the user scrolls down a bit, the page is broken into specific sections for Sports, Entertainment and other popular topics.

Note that each sub-section includes its own images, most of which are links to embedded videos. This can be an effective means of grabbing the eye of somebody who is just doing a quick browse. Often, an image has caught my eye, I've stopped to check out the accompanying piece and an excellent use of embedded links to other stories has pulled me deeper into the site. 

Even the subtle things, like the shadow effects on the stock market indicators, add to the overall polished look of the site. Since this is the online arm of NBC, this is to be expected. Unfortunately, not all major media sites look as good as one would expect, but more on that in a future post. 

Room for improvement? Sure. 

For one, the banner at the top of the home page:

This is actually a clever little design element. If the user mouses over, say "Health", the floating "speech bubble" displays the most current Health headlines. Therefore, theoretically a person can get a quick recap of all the current news with a simple movement of the mouse. 

So, what's wrong with it? 

Well, I've been coming to this site for a long time and I just noticed that it existed when I was grabbing screen shots for this entry. 

The problem is that is looks too much like an advertising banner at first glance, which is all I was giving it. My clicking pattern was to open the site and immediately scroll down a couple of notches on my mouse wheel until the "ad" was buried at the top so I could see more content. 

What could fix this? Something as simple as moving the "msnbc.com" logo to the top of the page above the bubble. Users are trained to expect that the content of a site begins at that logo and anything above it is something else, typically an ad. 

Overall, MSNBC.com is very well designed but it still has a couple of places where it could be improved.