USA Today

USATODAY.com

Designing and layouting the Homepage

The USA Today, one of the prominent dailies in the United States, had managed to pull out an impressive online version of itself.

The website's homepage shows all the news that you can handle not only from America but also from different parts of the world.

The banner story has the biggest headline and other news stories follow it while the most popular stories are located on the right side.

Weather and markets are also there below the most popular stories followed by the top picks slideshow.

The subsections get their fair share on the homepage.( Nation and World, Money, Sports, Life, Travel, Your Life, Tech and Opinion) It also has its News from communities section which showcases news from different bloggers. These bloggers write reviews or something that they’ve experienced which can be relevant to  a specific audience.

Google search is located at the upper part of the homepage for searching news stories that were previously posted on the site.

The homepage has 4 boxes of advertisements, these advertisements are not too big and are also tolerable.

USA Today uses blue and other different colors in its homepage which I find good. It also has small pictures of different news stories making it more interesting. It has no dead spacing or gaps compared to CNN and BBC websites which both have empty spaces.

The Content

USA Today’s articles can be both long and short depending on what it is that’s being reported. What I noticed is that articles from this website are easy to comprehend. It can give you an understanding even with the topics that you are not familiar with.

It also captures whatever your interests may be, because of its interesting subsections. As for myself, I usually look at the sports and tech section of the website. They manage to update their articles frequently and just on time when a breaking news comes out. Different stories have small camera icons, it indicates that the story has a video included in it. A video is a great tool to describe a news story. I remember watching a video that made me imagine how horrible the massacre in Norway was.

When you open each news subsections, you’ll see more stories inside. It is like an independent website of that category and looks quite similar to its homepage (The homepage looks better). Your thirst for a certain news will certainly be quenched.

When you click a certain article, it is already integrated to different social networking sites which make sharing easy. You can also email it to a friend, print it out or comment on it. These articles also have different advertisements which are irrelevant to the story that you are reading. Ads are also placed awkwardly on the left side of the story usually under the caption of the picture.

USA Today also have interesting headlines that will make you curious about the story. The stories about health is one of the examples. Headlines lure  me and make me click the story. After reading it, I am contented with the time that I alloted for it because it was informative and has lots of trivia.

Android App

USA Today has a free application for Android smartphones. It is available to download at the Android Marketplace. After installing the app and connecting your smartphone to the internet, latest news stories are just one click away. News gathering has never been this easy.

USA Today and Social Networking

USA Today is actively participating on social networking sites. It has an official Facebook Fan Page and Twitter accounts which update its followers whenever a news article is published on the website. The subsections of USA Today also have their own fan pages.

Recommendations 

• It would look nicer if the advertisements inside the stories are placed somewhere else. It should not be under the photo caption.

• Maintain how the articles are being delivered: Easy to read and understand

• Subsections should be compressed to eliminate the dead spaces

• Integrate the Facebook fan pages into one . Remove fan pages of each subsections to promote the website as a whole.

Conclusion

USAToday.com is a great website, very informative and easy to navigate. It is not boring compared to other sites and its loading time is not bad either. Even though it is not perfect, the site packs all the things that a news website should have. It has no major flaws whatsoever.