> I'm not really sure what changes could be made that would encourage users to explore. Could you elaborate?
Any good site needs to get the visitors' attention from the first moments after they open it. I do not mean to steal the users' attention by showing forms to agree with or blinking elements. I mean showing the most useful content, carefully organized so that it is simple and natural to work with.
Currently, hoxly news site looks like n-th iteration of a typical corporation site with content blocks in the middle replaced with a modified HN-style list of links. There is the top bar, some account-related stuff in the top right corner, the about and policy links at the bottom. Nothing really new, no interesting design elements.
To most visitors, such a site appears like they have already seen it and they may wonder what makes this one stand out. The content, obviously, could be the answer. But with the current generic look, some people may think that it is yet another link aggregation site which aims to artificially boost its PageRank score and simply leave.
I do not have any exact ideas for improvement, but in my opinion, the site should have a more unique look and be more practical to use. The main areas I would focus on are:
1. Bad usage of space. At a normal zoom level, on a typical 16:9 screen, the actual news content is restricted to a column whose width is about ~30% of the available display width. The rest is blank. When I zoom in so that almost all of the display width is utilized, then I see only ~7 news items with overly large font. In other words, there is no way to properly resize the website so that all the space is used efficiently.
I would change that e.g. by moving the top bar to the side or making it hidden until the mouse is moved near its edge. Also, I would use at least two column layout on wide screens.
2. The offered features (timestamp, user, upvotes, comments, etc.) are difficult to recognize for a new visitor, because they do not stand out. It is not clear that those phrases under the news items have some interesting meaning and that some of them are clickable. I would say that many first time visitors would simply overlook them.
3. As was already mentioned, it would help to provide even more information about the particular news item on the main page, so that visitors could decide with more confidence about whether it would be interesting to them or not. A link to the article from which most of the facts are taken, for instance, could be useful.
Any good site needs to get the visitors' attention from the first moments after they open it. I do not mean to steal the users' attention by showing forms to agree with or blinking elements. I mean showing the most useful content, carefully organized so that it is simple and natural to work with.
Currently, hoxly news site looks like n-th iteration of a typical corporation site with content blocks in the middle replaced with a modified HN-style list of links. There is the top bar, some account-related stuff in the top right corner, the about and policy links at the bottom. Nothing really new, no interesting design elements.
To most visitors, such a site appears like they have already seen it and they may wonder what makes this one stand out. The content, obviously, could be the answer. But with the current generic look, some people may think that it is yet another link aggregation site which aims to artificially boost its PageRank score and simply leave.
I do not have any exact ideas for improvement, but in my opinion, the site should have a more unique look and be more practical to use. The main areas I would focus on are:
1. Bad usage of space. At a normal zoom level, on a typical 16:9 screen, the actual news content is restricted to a column whose width is about ~30% of the available display width. The rest is blank. When I zoom in so that almost all of the display width is utilized, then I see only ~7 news items with overly large font. In other words, there is no way to properly resize the website so that all the space is used efficiently.
I would change that e.g. by moving the top bar to the side or making it hidden until the mouse is moved near its edge. Also, I would use at least two column layout on wide screens.
2. The offered features (timestamp, user, upvotes, comments, etc.) are difficult to recognize for a new visitor, because they do not stand out. It is not clear that those phrases under the news items have some interesting meaning and that some of them are clickable. I would say that many first time visitors would simply overlook them.
3. As was already mentioned, it would help to provide even more information about the particular news item on the main page, so that visitors could decide with more confidence about whether it would be interesting to them or not. A link to the article from which most of the facts are taken, for instance, could be useful.