10/15/09
Yahoo’s reinvention may have hit a snag. It started out with the high profile hire of Carol Bartz, which was followed by a redesign of their home page and the addition of customizing features. But, at least one user – my nephew Steven – noted the change but didn’t necessarily find that it enhanced his experience as a user.
Now comes word that brand perception has fallen steeply since September 28, 2009, when a $100 million advertising campaign was launched to tout the new capabilities. Bummer.
What do you think? Have you noticed the change? Is it an improvement?
Walsh, M. (2009, October 13). Survey: Yahoo Campaign Dampens Perception. mediapost.com. Retrived October 14, 2009, from
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=115396
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I personally am a loyal Googler. While my first e-mail address back in 6th or 7th grade was with yahoo, I haven't intentionally visited the yahoo homepage in over 5 years. So of course after reading your blog entry I decided to take a look and wow does it look different.
Upon entry I was bombarded with an ad that covered the full page in view. After figuring out how to close the ad, all I could see was a clutter of 'favorites' widgets and unorganized news titles. It took me some exploring to finally understand that they were attempting to make the site customizable with Iphone-like applications.
While I admire their attempt at keeping up with competitors Google and Apple, I find the new site to be quite unappealing visually and functionally. I don't know if it's because I'm used to the simplicity of my Google homepage, or the Apple mastery of their applications, but something about the yahoo site seems desperate. It's true that we live in a culture now where everything seems to be customizable, but yahoo needs to figure out a way to do that in a more organized and visually appealing manner.
Aside from these issues, I forgot to mention one of the biggest problems I saw with the site. Had yahoo not been written all over the homepage, I would have had NO idea that this was the same website I used for my first e-mail account. It seems like yahoos redesign has created an entirely new entity that was unrecognizable under the image of yahoo.
I guess it's sort of clear by this point that I've gotten used to the Google way of life, and yahoo just isn't giving me any reason to switch that habit. There's also the fact that I have an Iphone.. since I do have all of my applications on my phone, I see the customization of my search engine page as distracting. I want to use my search engine page just for searching and Google search homepage gives me exactly that. I think that yahoo just needs to keep working until they find their own niche. For now, I don't think their redesign has accomplished much aside from overall user confusion.
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