http://www.wlwt.com/weather/grid.html
WLWT has come out with a new weather page on their site. Amazing pros and a few cons. Let’s take a look.
The PROS:
The site is designed rather well which is a rare thing for their site as a whole (I won’t go into the struggling information hierarchy for the home page). The site is built with modules, probably done with AJAX, that you can move around and adjust as you like. It is a nice feature and seems to be well worth the time. The site remembers where you moved items so that when you come back, it is saved to your computer’s personal preferences. Nice WLWT.
The CONS:
The color palette is a little primary (read that as grade-school-ish) and very flat. The modules and graphics overall lack a depth to continue to pull you in to the experience. The “new” icons developed for the weather systems read poorly. A few people that I have shown the site to read the cloud with rain as a whale peeing. The ad space as well is obscenely huge and almost bigger than the weather application. That is disgusting. The site should kill the bottom advertisement and leave the skyscraper banner on the right (with the required “advertisement” verbiage tiny above it. In the future, the ability to turn off modules would also help on the 2.0 launch of it. As once you use the site more than once, the welcome module is unnecessary.
WLWT has come out with a great ground-breaking weather page on their site. I hope that they continue to develop it as a tool and a little less of a banner ad seller. Remember, advertising is OK in small doses, don’t overkill it and ruin the experience like the movie theaters did.
2 Comments
January 30, 2009 at 4:42 pm
It looks like news stations who utilize IBSYS.com for their websites are migrating to this. Our local ABC affiliate is using the same format now. I’m going to stick with Weather.com if it’s all the same to everyone.
January 31, 2009 at 10:21 pm
Yeah. I have seen it on another site too. I am with you, weather.com is the lesser of 2 evils.