On Innovation

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Redesigning The Washington Post web site

March 14, 2011

It’s tricky changing the tires on a moving bus, and washingtonpost.com has been cruising since 1995. The site was an early digital innovator, but technological advances and evolving forms had made it a mishmash of experiences. It was great for the thing you came for, but if you wanted to look around, it was kind of a mess.

This holistic overhaul is designed to make finding stories and moving from one to the next much easier. We’ve grouped similar functions and content, such as related visuals and stories (see below). Here’s an example of how contextual links have changed on article pages: Instead of four zones competing for a user’s attention, we now have one organized area promoting deeper engagement:

On section fronts, we’ve surfaced the depth of our coverage in multiple ways.

Some stories are best told through images or video; others have political or business analysis. On complex stories, the design lets users choose how they want to engage (see below). You might see the news article, a photo gallery, a graphic or an opinion piece — all on the same event, but alternating in the prominent display.

The new design is module-based. There are individual containers for specific types of content; how the pages come together depends on how editors arrange the containers. The modules give us much more flexibility to update and prioritize stories in real-time. They make our site more dynamic and its presentation consistent (see below).

The methodology for organizing our coverage is represented in a redesigned global navigation. Our core content areas — Politics, Opinions, Local and Sports — are grouped in all-caps in the main navigation bar. New sections, like Investigations and Multimedia, are also featured, as is Conversations, our new social destination hub.

We’ve also upgraded how commenting works. Articles will now have the most interesting user comments elevated, and Post reporters and editors will participate in some conversations. We’ve designed badges to identify user experts, which commenters can earn based on the quality and frequency of their contributions.

Like any redesign, the new washingtonpost.com is a work in progress. We’ll continue to improve the site, add modules to our library and develop more innovative ways to look at our world. Find out more about the site changes here.

Justin Ferrell and Sarah Sampsel / Washington Post Design