We asked, you answered: what people are saying about the new CBC.ca
On July 18 we introduced the new website design for the CBC.ca homepage, and we asked for feedback. In the first five days, over 6,000 people took the time to reach out.
(For comparison’s sake, that’s more emails than we received over the entire course of the last Olympic Games!)
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Our aim is to build this website for you and with you. We want to build a good thing. And your input is helping to make that possible.
Let’s take a look at some of the themes that keep coming up in your feedback:
Why are you fixing what wasn’t broken?
Well, it was a little broken.
Our old website was not responsive, which means it didn’t work on mobile devices or tablets. Since more than 70 per cent of visitors to CBC.ca consume our content using these devices, we knew we needed to evolve the site to meet their needs.
Not only did we want to build a responsive site, we also wanted to make sure that visiting our web pages didn’t eat up all your data. We needed to use newer technology in order to render the pages quickly and efficiently.
Finally, the old websites were fragmented and fairly expensive to maintain. We built the new website to operate more cohesively and efficiently. maximize operating efficiencies.
But I just want news!
A big part of what the CBC does is produce news, but that’s not all we do. Our homepage is a gateway to our many offerings.
For lots of Canadians, the news is the most important thing we do — but that’s not true for everyone.
Think about the homepage like you do about society. There are lots of people with all sorts of interests, and not everything is for everyone. And hey, you never know when you might discover something new.
(For example, I am newly obsessed with our amateur athletes, and I never would have gained this appreciation without exploring CBC’s homepage. In case you are just looking for news, you can always bookmark cbc.ca/news 😀.)
Why does it take so long to load a page?
There’s a fix in the works for this! We are working to identify short-term and long-term improvements to ensure the pages are loading as quickly as possible. We made the first improvement on July 21, and the rest will come over the next few days, weeks and months.
It’s confusing/I can’t navigate
We’ve heard from some of you on this, and it inspired us to see what we might be able to do.
We’ve seen demand for easier access to local news pages. We have a quick fix we applied this week, and in the longer term, we will conduct additional testing to identify how we can make it easier for you to find your local content.
We’ve also heard from a few folks that navigating the new site is a challenge. We will keep working on improving the site. What is most helpful is when you send us specific feedback about what is and isn’t working for you.
If you want a hand getting familiar with the new layout, this tour might help.
A note about feedback:
We want to give a shout out to the folks who sent detailed descriptions of what they did and didn’t like. This is so helpful as we continue to build on our first version of the new homepage. The more specific you are, the more useful the feedback.
One more thing:
We are putting together a panel of Canadians to help guide us as we build digital products and experiences.
If you would like to take part, please sign up here!
Excited to see what we can build together.
Until next time,
Emma
