The New MSN Homepage Unveiled
See what MSN Corporate Vice President Erik Jorgensen has to say about it.
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| SEE UPDATE BELOW
Today is an exciting day for our team at MSN because we unveiled the most significant redesign our MSN.com homepage has seen in over a decade. We spent thousands of hours talking with customers; testing hundreds of ideas; experimenting around the world and carefully evaluating what our users want, and don’t want - to deliver a homepage that is designed to be the best homepage on the Web. We hope you’ll agree. |
In our conversations with customers, we consistently heard that you want less clutter, easier access to the information & services you care about, and powerful search integration to help you make decisions faster. So, we started from scratch to cut the clutter on our homepage and reduced the amount of links by 50%. There’s also a simplified navigation across news, entertainment, sports, money, and lifestyle that lets you drill into information topics that interest you, without being overwhelming. Local information from your neighborhood is important to you and so is high quality, in-line video – so we offer both, right on the homepage. And, you told us you want the latest information not only from your favorite sources, but also from your friends, and the breadth of the Web – so we now offer convenient access to Facebook, Twitter, & Windows Live services and the most powerful search experience on the Web from Bing, empowering you to make more informed, faster decisions. And this is just the beginning - keep visiting our blog for more MSN news in the coming weeks.
The simple, uncluttered environment of our new homepage also affords an advertising opportunity, unlike anything we’ve offered before. Advertisers can create a conversation with customers through engaging, high-performing, rich-media advertising campaigns and know their message will resonate. Advertisers who have seen early previews of the site love the new design and the new ad opportunities have been well received. You’ll see more on this in the coming months.
The new homepage will begin rolling out tomorrow and become widely available to over 100 million U.S. customers early next year. We didn't have a renowned director or cinematographer handy, but we did have a tripod, so U.S. Executive Producer Scott Moore and I did a video that will give you a little more information about the new MSN.
We invite you to preview the new MSN and let us know what you think. Your feedback is important to us.
Erik Jorgensen
MSN CORPORATE VICE PRESIDENT
UPDATE:
Thank you for trying out the new MSN Homepage and letting us know what you think. It’s an exciting time for us to be launching the most major new homepage we’ve launched in a decade. People are using the Web in different ways today and we’re working hard to create a page that offers great search and lets you explore the Web, and stay connected with your friends via email, Twitter, and Facebook. We do, however, realize that any unexpected change can be hard for some customers, and that some of our loyal customers miss our traditional blue homepage. We appreciate that feedback and continue to work on the page to make the overall experience even better. Stay tuned! We will launch a campaign to let you know when our final new homepage will be introduced to all of our customers, so there shouldn’t be any unexpected surprises next time. Thanks for your patience and keep the feedback coming – we’re listening!
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(You guys might want to fix the lack of feedback that occurs when clicking the "Add a comment" link above when you're not signed in. It doesn't do anything.)
New design looks great. Is there a plan to update My.MSN or My.Live and provide compelling mobile device access?
"reduced the amount of links by 50%."
Wow - how do you get to be Vice President without knowing the difference between "Amount" and "Number"?
A very functional yahoo / google look. I like it rather than love it. The bottom left of the page is a problem. It's hard to work out where each section starts and ends which makes it harder to scan and makes it feel cluttered. So low-lights / spacing would sort this out I think.
I, somehow, strongly believe that 70% of people(not based on any survey) all over the world like simple colors viz. white. Rest like flashy background colors. So, the trick is to keep the default as white and add an option to customize it. This simple trick has worked for Google & Yahoo and so would it for MSN. Anyway, nice to see MSN realize this at last.