Kurt Jarchow's Blog

The Weather Network is my main source for weather and I’ve noticed they have just redesigned their site.  Since this is my area of expertise, and I have some free time tonight,  let’s take a closer look into their redesign and where they hit and missed..

Before:

The Weather Network Screen Shot (before) taken from Alexa.com

After:

The Weather Network Screen Shot (new)

Let’s look at some of the much needed improvements The Weather Network made to this site.

Reorganized main navigation: Taking out the left navigation in favour for a top-heavy design was a no-brainer.  The old site was a littered with links and without logical organization.

Enhanced search bar: Taking a cue from many other sites, the search bar takes a new and improved focus.  When you log in the search bar will expand out showing you your favorite locations, including ski resorts and other major locations.

Usable Footer: You can’t see it in the screen shots, but the footer is feature rich and not bad to look at either.  You can see by the options that they are really trying to take the weather to new mediums.

And the bad news…

Unfortunately, that is a short list for a complete redesign for a modern website.  The redesign brings the site from 2000 to 2004.  Let’s look at some improvements which still need to be made.

Unenthusiastic design: The site still “feels” old.  The style is definitely cleaner, but the site is still bland and the pale colours just look washed away.  This is a very “safe” design that doesn’t excite.

Bad use of space: While I understand the map, it takes up too much high-value space.  Punch up the news section.  I don’t know how many times I’ve gone to the website looking for snowstorm updates and not being able to find anything.  The advertisements in the right would also look a little less like… well annoying advertisements if they were integrated into the site more.  Look at all that space under the advertisement wasted.

No News: I thought this was a site for weather news?

Endless Indexes: While I like the new menus, try clicking on a few.  Link, after endless link, only to bring you to a Rolodex of… yes more links.

Enhanced new search bar is not so enhanced: Why hide your favorite locations in the search bar?  Why not have them in a more obvious spot on the page?  Instead I’d like to see an auto-suggest feature for every location, even if you are not logged in (most people are not).

Why don’t you know my location?: IP to location software is cheap and a great way to guess a user’s location.  If I pick a different location the site should save it.

There are a few steps further to go but this is a welcome update.  I hope to see more improvements in the future.