Re: News web sites

From: RAKSHEETA JUGHDHARREE <raksheeta.jughdharree1_at_umail.uom.ac.mu>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2015 22:12:31 +0400

Hello,

As an end-user's point of view, I find the new L'express website better
than the old one.

However, the ads on the website are very irritating, especially those on
the homepage. Has this been purposefully done to drive the viewers'
attention on those ads?

There are also many blank spaces throughout the whole website. And the
quality of the pictures used is not to the standard of a Number One Website
of Mauritius.

Hoping that these feedbacks can help to improve the website.

Regards,
R.J

P.s: I liked the Divali lamp which was put besides the L'express website
yesterday. :)

On Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 3:38 PM, S Moonesamy <sm+mu_at_elandsys.com> wrote:

> Hi Mike, Nadim,
> At 04:04 11-11-2015, Jules Mike Giovanni wrote:
>
>> On another note, I feel that all the blocks are too big. The overall
>> design feels a bit like a metro design. Sometimes the blocks are so big
>> that the content that is supposed to be in them does not fit properly. If
>> we look at the "Featured" (why is it in English is another thing) block, we
>> can notice that most of the pictures are of low quality and this creates
>> this annoying "pixelated" effect.
>>
>
> The images appear as low quality. Some of images are blurry. I read
> about the Metro style as I did not understand why it was used for a news
> web site. I am not sure whether it is an appropriate design in this case.
>
> At 17:04 11-11-2015, Nadim Bundhoo wrote:
>
>> Do you remember the several animated GIFs on webpages in the early 2000's
>> ? Every animations distracted us from viewing the one piece of information
>> on the page that was supposed to be the main "content."
>>
>
> Yes, that was distracting.
>
> On this new version of lexpress.mu, I feel the same. Which piece of info
>> should I focus on?
>>
>
> You are supposed to focus on the ads. :-)
>
> I do not have an idea on the size of the old version, but I did a test on
>> this new version. I found that the homepage weighs around 23MB. The website
>> is responsive, which means that on mobiles and tablets, dark matter are
>> added to the pages. By dark matter I mean that assets are downloaded though
>> not visible (most probably because of display:none in the CSS) [1].
>>
>
> I tested the (data) size for
> http://www.elandsys.com/~sm/cellular-data-usage-201508.html The web site
> was slow when I did tested it on a mobile phone. It might be because of
> the "dark matter" which you mentioned.
>
> The cost for 1GB of mobile data is Rs299 [2] or Rs 0.299 per MB of data.
>> If everytime I visit lexpress.mu on my mobile (with this 1GB data plan),
>> I'll have to pay Rs 6.877 (it may be slightly less, depending on the amount
>> of data downloaded).
>>
>
> It would be cheaper to buy the newspaper instead.
>
> Anyway, it is not encouraging at all to visit lexpress.mu on a mobile.
>>
>
> Yes.
>
> I don't know about lexpress.mu's analytics, but having 2 different
>> versions of the website (desktop & mdot) would have been better, instead of
>> one responsive version. Imagine the bandwidth wasted when the website is
>> accessed on a mobile phone.
>>
>
> I didn't look into how the web site implemented responsive web design. I
> would not expect such an approach to cause unneeded use of bandwidth.
>
> The website has also been designed to cater for IE7 and IE8. Say if 1% of
>> the traffic comes from surfers on IE7 & IE8 - which makes around 10000
>> surfers according to "News web sites traffic in Mauritius" [3], why do we
>> offer them a responsive website? Surfers on these browsers may still be on
>> Windows XP (perhaps government officials) with a slow computer. Why should
>> they have to download all the CSS & JS then?
>>
>
> 1% of web traffic is a significant number. It gets complicated when part
> of that 1% are readers you want to reach. This is where I would start
> looking into the details (CSS, JS, etc.) of what is being proposed.
>
> I am on MyT 10M [4]. Defimedia's homepage weighs around 14MB and loads in
>> around 20s whereas Lexpress.mu weighs around 23MB and loads in 37s. (number
>> of CSS & JS files, images/ads/videos/audio?)
>>
>> Defimedia's page starts to render after 4.6s whereas Lexpress page starts
>> to render after 6.2s. (CSS & JS ordering?)
>>
>
> I'll leave both of you to discuss this with Sandeep. :-)
>
> The browser makes 227 requests if I surf Defimedia's page for the first
>> time and 22 requests subsequently. 338 requests are made if I surf on
>> Lexpress homepage for the first time, and 163 requests subsequently.
>> (caching of assets?)
>>
>
> 338 requests is a very high number. A lot of the discussion relates to
> how user experience is assessed.
>
> The only area where I could find L'express better than Defimedia is the
>> first-time-to-byte (i.e. time to wait for server to send first piece of
>> contents, usually the HTML). Lexpress.mu may be behind a cache server
>> (Varnish?) and Defimedia not.
>>
>
> Defimedia.info is using nginx. www.lexpress.mu is using Varnish. The
> time to first byte (not a local test) for defimedia.info is 1.763
> seconds, and 0.586 seconds for www.lexpress.mu.
>
> At 00:01 12-11-2015, Nadim Bundhoo wrote:
>
>> One thing that I need to be tested. If people reading this ML can send
>> their result, it would be great. I want to know whether the batteries of
>> mobiles get drained fast when surfing on L'Express' website. I surfed 4
>> times on the homepage. My battery level:
>>
>> 1st: from 48% to 30%
>> 2nd: from 30% to 19%
>> 3rd: from 15% to 8%
>> 4th: from 100% to 92%
>>
>> I was only on the homepage, and scrolling up and down, without opening
>> other pages.
>>
>
> The above behaviour is unusual. I'll try and do a test as I would like to
> find out what is causing this.
>
> Regards,
> S. Moonesamy
>
>
>
>
Received on Thu Nov 12 2015 - 18:12:49 PST

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