A brand new look for Gfycat
We built Gfycat over the past 2 years by adopting amazing open-source technologies to deliver a solid experience to our users. Navigation was a breeze and the site was functional. Looking at it at the end of 2015, we did feel that we needed to overhaul the site. We looked at 3 guiding principles:
- Promote responsive design: The web is diverse. Our users want to enjoy the site whether on a small laptop or a 40" screen. Instead of making the user adapt to the UI, we made the UI respond to the user needs.
- Get the UI out of the way of the content. Espouse subdued colors, highlight the GIF in all its HTML5 video glory. We moved to shades of grey and white. We removed the distracting status bar and the heavy description bar next to the content.
- Provide something new. Our users want diverse and new content. Let the virality of the content drive content placement decisions. To this end, we improved our freshness algorithms to provide fun new content trending on Gfycat.com or on the numerous social networks where it’s being shared.
We released the new site update soon after the holiday break and couldn’t be happier with the reception. More users are coming to the site, browsing different sections, navigating around and finding new content they had not discovered before.
The new site has a channel directory that picks trending topics (yes, we loved every SuperBowl 50 GIF created and shared on Gfycat).
As we were rebuilding the site, we took the opportunity to create new experiences for our explorers. We were inspired by the layout of Pinterest pins in our search results pages.
We also wanted to deliver a public face for each of our creators. This started with a unique URL for each of the creators. Starting January, every creator on Gfycat gets their unique URL (http://gfycat.com/@username), inspired by Medium. Finally, clicking on every GIF puts the user in theatre mode so they can enjoy the moment fully.
We have received tons of positive feedback so far and are excited to have laid the groundwork for a lot of great GIF and social features. We will remain commited to serving a great experience to our creators and the millions of users that come to see that great content created by the community to then share with their friends.
