Sitecritic.net Website Reviews – How can your website be improved?

Form

WRAL has absolutely packed the links into their pages while maintaining ease of navigation. With strategic use of headlines, boxes, main headings and positioning, it is very easy to find your way around the site and choose what to look at. As is usual on news websites, a lot of information needs to be passed onto the reader and it’s fortunate that WRAL managed to handle this tricky problem. A main heading at the top of each page gives a summary of what is on the page and this helps the reader to decide quickly whether to read the page or not.

The WRAL.com logo with the tagline “coverage you can count on” is a good logo for a news website as it is striking, simple and memorable. Beside the logo (in the banner) is a transparent newsy image set on a gradient background which is subtle and appropriate. The colour scheme for the site is blues, greys and whites and this is quite suitable, as attention is focused on the text and other colourful elements (such as maps and images) that need to be seen by the viewer. Layout is handled well with left and right columns that branch into more columns on the left when needed. Consistent layout, navigation and presentation make WRAL a “trustworthy” website. Additionally, the cute corner on the top right which shows temperature, a map and subscription options is interesting to look at and a good example of what can be achieved in a small space.

Function

WRAL is an immense website with a lot of helpful aspects that haven’t yet been implemented on some of the other major news sites. Traffic reports (and maps), TV Guides, weather reports, sports, business and news coverage, restaurant ratings, consumer section, horoscopes, contests, lottery results, events, health & lifestyle section and an entertainment section will no doubt keep viewers interested for hours. Advertising is usually expected on news websites (they are prime real estate) and WRAL has quite a few ads, but at least these are non-intrusive and kept to the top, right and bottom. It was pleasing to see there were no popup ads.

Loading times are fast and the pages and subdomains are organised well. The coding is a combination of xhtml, javascript and css and has no obvious issues. I am not sure where the page script came from – the words “Do not alter anything below this line!” lead me to believe the script came from somewhere else but it’s hard to tell as WRAL might have had a head webmaster code the script for the team.

Conclusion

WRAL is a fine example of how a news website should be done and I highly recommend a visit, especially if you are an aspiring news website designer. The amount of work that has gone into this website is astounding and inspiring (although I suspect WRAL has a team of web people working on it) and readers can certainly look forward to a superior news experience. I had only one question about this website – call me an ignoramus, but what do the initials WRAL stand for?

fig 1. Traffic Maps

fig 2. “Cute” Corner

fig 3. WRAL Logo