The new Radio 1 homepage
Man, what a New Year! Things are normally pretty quiet here over Christmas and we are all happily plucking the turkey because we know that loads of people are doing the same. This year we offered listeners lots of pre-Christmas gifts - some of our best music sessions to take away. Over 12 days we saw around 600,000 downloads. There's one to fight the Christmas stats slump!
Once the excitement of Christmas was over and the world was driving to their next destination for New Year's Eve, a hardcore group of us were working away to prepare for two major projects: - new homepages for Radio 1 & 1Xtra - the Visualising Radio Trial on Chris Moyles' show and on Switch with Annie & Nick
Radio 1's new homepage went live on Sunday. It's already been in beta for a week and it's been a brilliant week! The internal dial in my guts, which seems to automatically weigh up the negative and positive responses to a project, has settled on a thumbs up, gold star, good work.
That's not to say everyone loves it - of course they don't - but before I get into that I should say what we set out to achieve with this revamp:
We want to ensure our homepage is young. It should appeal to a range of people but primarily, it's for young people. It has to be a bit cool and a bit populist but ultimately for someone who is between 15 and 24.
The site needs to be modular and feed driven. We've worked hard to pull together the appropriate feeds - the newest of which is the video feed. The video instinctively feels like it should be further up the page, but we are waiting to see how this pans out: Is it technically sound? Is the content flowing fast enough?
Modularity is important for the future. We need to be able to carve up our pages when we personalise Radio 1, and to change elements without having to spend resources on redesigning the lot. I guess this comes at a cost, as some people have noticed the new grid pattern and said they miss the curves and corners.
We also wanted to make the site simpler and there will be more navigational changes to come. We removed the 'Experimental' module from the homepage, as this content isn't a genre of its own and often falls into one of our other categories. We removed the 'Daytime' module because we use the main promotional window to show much of our daytime entertainment content. Frankly if it's daytime content that we weren't willing to put in the main promo window, then why would we highlight it?
Feedback from the audience hasn't led us to make major immediate changes, but we've got lots to think about and work on such as: - simpler navigation - toning it down (although most love the bright colour - it feels contemporary and young) - we are also going to consider a drop down menu for DJs and Shows navigation.
Whatever your views, I think we're in a better place than ever before in terms of being able to respond to them. We can make regular small and simple changes, so do let us know what you think by leaving your comments below.
Big thanks go to my colleagues in Radio 1/1Xtra Interactive and in Future Media &Technology for working so hard to deliver the new sites.
The other major opener for the New Year is the Visualising Radio Trial. My internal gut dial is still spinning on this one. Not least because you just never know how 'live' things are going to go. Yasser at Radio Labs blog and Duncan at Whomwah have more details.
I've staked quite a lot on the concept of Visualising Radio over the years. This is a concept that may not become 'normal' for many years but the ability for us to deliver glanceable content is going to be an important part of keeping radio relevant as broadcasting and IP march forward.
Early in my career at the BBC, I wrote the text for RDS and DAB. Few people at the time saw the value in LiveText on radio... they wouldn't dream of turning it off now. The exciting step here though, is in the real-time reflection of our audiences inbound texts, the automation of artist information, images and 'now playing' data, the editorial fun that we can have running filters over our SMS comments... and of course being able to watch Moyles live from 6.30 am till 10 am... for just one week.
Lets see how it goes and I look forward to reading your comments.
Ben Chapman is Interactive Editor, Audio and Music Interactive.
Comment number 1.
At 12:56 13th Jan 2009, nickpeters wrote:My initial thought is: what a massive improvement. Nice one.
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Comment number 2.
At 13:24 13th Jan 2009, cjedj wrote:Love the new site. Love the visual radio. Love the way the visual media side of things at Radio 1 seem to be going, and I've been happy to say so in the online survey.
Sure, there are always going to be bits and pieces that you like less than others, but as an overall package and major part of the branding and "feel" of the station, I think it's lightyears ahead of most other stuff I've seen, and very exciting. Keep pushing the boundaries!
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Comment number 3.
At 13:28 13th Jan 2009, Jessica Lares wrote:I'm starting to think that the BBC sites need to be a little bit more mobile as everyone has an iPhone or Blackberry these days. I know that Radio 1 has a mobile site, but you have to realize that some of the newer technology doesn't allow for direct downloads to the phone. Overall, I'm liking the new look though!
Jessica from Dallas, Texas, USA
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Comment number 4.
At 13:43 13th Jan 2009, LeChuckie wrote:I'm really pleased that you have revamped the radio1 home page. I always dreaded visiting it before because I found it slow to load and difficult to navigate (for an internet savy person like myself, so I wondered how the majority of Radio1 Users would have got on). Anyway it is a great improvement, and I am all for the modular look and feel.
The visual player is a great experiment (it did cut out a number of times this morning so I gave up on it) but I am having difficulty in seeing how this might catch on. I will be keen to see where you guys take it after the week is up.
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Comment number 5.
At 13:44 13th Jan 2009, Joe Halliday wrote:Please put something in that gap at the top.
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Comment number 6.
At 16:11 13th Jan 2009, Hymagumba wrote:@jugalug, I think the gap where the branding spills through is the nicest part of the design.
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Comment number 7.
At 16:22 13th Jan 2009, Moz wrote:Seems a bit ironic that the page that is always telling us about new developments in BBC wesbites - the blog pages - are amongst the most old-hat looking pages on the whole site!
When are we getting W I D E blog pages!!!?
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Comment number 8.
At 17:35 13th Jan 2009, treebark wrote:I really like the new website, the colours are really vibrant on both the 1 and 1xtra sites. I agree that the space on the Radio 1 page at the top is a bit strange, is this going to be left clear or filled with a slogan as on the 1xtra site?
And I agree with #7, there isn't even the small black bar at the top which seems to act as a compromise for the other old-style pages. It would be nice to see fully wide versions of the blogs.
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Comment number 9.
At 05:50 14th Jan 2009, dockrue wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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Comment number 10.
At 05:50 14th Jan 2009, dockrue wrote:Visual players and radios are a great new look. Nothing stagnant about it. Great find.
Dr. Brad
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Comment number 11.
At 21:28 14th Jan 2009, Joe Halliday wrote:Hyma, I see it is supposed to part of the design, but it looks to me to be off centre - I'd prefer some sort of text at least like 'Digital, FM, Online' or whatever.
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Comment number 12.
At 15:25 16th Feb 2009, aeropaulcross wrote:I can only say excellent looks a lot better and the very user friendly.
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Comment number 13.
At 15:29 16th Feb 2009, aeropaulcross wrote:Forgot to say keep up the good work.
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Comment number 14.
At 14:44 18th Mar 2009, jadewood12 wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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Comment number 15.
At 10:49 13th Sep 2009, U14134634 wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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