Overview
The New York Times website (https://www.nytimes.com/) is the online presence for the NYT newspaper based in New York City. The site offers news and opinions on a variety of topics, such as business, politics, science, style, books, sports, etc. The daily paper was first published in 1851 and the online version was first published in 1996 (Lichterman, 2016). The online edition is a subscription service, with a few articles available for free each month.
Assessment
Below is a performance report overview for nytimes.com, provided by https://gtmetrix.com. As you can see, there is a need to optimize the site to improve page load times. This can be done in a variety of ways, from optimizing images to reducing the size of the page.
Overall, the site closely mirrors the print edition which allows users to intuitively find relevant content at first glance. The dual navigation makes the site accessible across various devices. Though the content appears condensed, the index page contains dynamic content that changes on a regular basis.
Recommendations
- The current site is a boxed layout. This should be changed to a fluid layout so that the content can stretch for today’s larger screens yet still adapt for mobile.
- The opinion sidebar should be one column with the featured opinion at the top of the list.
- Photos and captions should be of a consistent size and format.
- Change static feature sections, such as Smarter Living, to a dynamic gallery scroll.
- Add a scroll to top button for easier access to the top of the page
Sources
Lichterman, J. (2016, January 22). 20 years ago today, NYTimes.com debuted "on-line" on the web. Retrieved from https://www.niemanlab.org/2016/01/20-years-ago-today-nytimes-com-debuted-on-line-on-the-web/
