Yahoo Trying on a New Look
By Azam on September 18, 2008 
Yahoo is testing out a new look on its home page. Yahoo is trying to simply the user experience with a lighter version to fast and quick access for users. The re design is to make the most of the Yahoo landing page as the starting point on the web. Yahoo will open up the new home page to 3rd party tools and services. Yahoo needs to be careful and cautious on the changes they make to not upset their large user base. Yahoo will need to walk a fine line to balance new changes in trends and manage a very large installed user base.
According to comScore’s July stats, Yahoo (YHOO) has about 82 million daily visitors to its homepages. Also, most of those users use the Yahoo main page as their homepage that has been fully programmed and designed by Yahoo. Yahoo main page gets more than 300 million unique monthly visitors.
The WSJ Kara Swisher
from All Things D reports on Yahoo Re Design and Yahoo Opening Up the Home Page
The First Look at the New Yahoo Homepage Redesign: Apps Rule!
Thus, making a success of its new design is critical and Yahoo’s CEO Jerry Yang has been touting the idea that Yahoo must be the “starting point” to the Web for users.
To respond to users who want to access information and services more quickly, the new homepage will be much shorter and made up of more “snippets” and have links to outside email providers (initially, Google and AOL).
Most importantly, the new homepage will prominently feature a left-hand vertical bar, which has applications from both Yahoo properties and third-party services like eBay.
These apps can added and subtracted easily. Eventually, there will be thousands of apps, which Yahoo will offer and also will vet from outside developers.
“People want broadcast and narrowcast at the same time,” said Tapan Bhat, Yahoo’s SVP of Front Doors, Communities and Network Services, in an interview with BoomTown. “They want choices, but they also want don’t want to do the work involved [in programming their own homepage].”
Bhat said the changes were made after a lot of research of user behavior and also paying attention to key trends, such as the widgetization of applications and the trend toward openness.
But Bhat said more people wanted quick access to things like email without having to launch apps. Instead, users will be able to see it all on the main page.
“It is not a dashboard approach of My Yahoo or iGoogle,” he said. “People are time-starved…so it is important to the user to get to their relevant daily information as quickly as possible without having to click around.”
Bhat said the rollout tomorrow will not be final and that Yahoo will keep making changes, depending on reaction.
“We don’t want 300 million people opposed to change,” he said. “So, we are going to be listening hard.”
The New Look
Tags : , Jerry Yang, Tapan Bhat, yahoo, Yahoo Home Page