Comparison of Web Sites: STLToday

Lukas Litzsinger


Archive: (Nov. 28, 2001)
http://web.archive.org/web/20011129024848/www.stltoday.com/

Today: (April 14, 2008)
stltoday.com

The first thing that jumps out at me is the white space. There is more white space now than there was in the past, though some of it is detrimental with the current ads (the header sometimes bleeds into the ads and has little contrast with its surroundings).

Also, there is a lot of excess space to the right and even on the top of my browser with a generic background, it looks like the resolution is something ridiculous like 640 or 800. This is even more apparent on the older site, but wouldn't have been much of a problem then.

There is very little that has remained the same about the site. Color scheme has changed from blue to red, there is multimedia buttons with videos/clickable photos now and even the logo has changed (for the worse, I might add). Of course, there is also a lot more information on the new page.

Both pages have the annoying moving advertisements, even if some of them are for the site itself. Repetition is used well on each site, with the format remaining familiar throughout. On the old site there is a banner picture that pops up and changes depending on which section you are reading. The current site does have some problems though: the focal point of each page, the picture box, is slightly different on each one.

Both sites seem to have consistent alignment, and separate the site into three columns. The links used to be on the right, now they are on the left.

Overall I would say the old site is nicer to look at, with the new one having more red and more information. Of course, the current site doesn't have the bold/italicized text for headlines of the older site. Some suggestions for each one:

Old:
1. Introduce a focal point that has content/not just a meaningless banner picture
2. move navigation to the left
3. get rid of bold+italicized text
4. too many shades of blue, add a little contrast
5. not enough colors in the text/re-use a color from the template there

New:
1. Make sure photo centerpieces all have same format
2. Up site resolution (could be my computer)
3. No moving ads next to header if possible
4. separate videos into categories as well as date/popularity
5. overload of information/links...there must be a better way