As part of our ongoing effort to expand our content offerings, we’d like to introduce #TechFridays, a new regular feature where we will discuss innovations in the technology sector, changes and proposed changes in tech policy, and the intersection between technology and culture.
Frequent visitors of Yahoo! Finance have been startled by a Beta site that is – by anyone’s standards – clunky. And the Yahoo! Finance users are revolting. Here are the top comment threads:
“Please give option to use old version.”
“How do I get back Yahoo Finance classic. This beta version that I never asked for is just plain awful.”
“I am done using yahoo finance, whoever designed this beta needs to be fired.”
“Boycott Yahoo Finance until they totally eliminate the beta version.”
And users are right. Yahoo! Finance has been the only property where Yahoo! has outperformed Google. eBizMBA said that Yahoo! Finance gets 70 million unique visitors a month – more than 1.75 times Google Finance.
In the early versions of the Beta site, Yahoo! Finance was barely useable. The site didn’t include news on the front page of its quotes – something a majority, if not all, of users would be interested in. The site has since added the news to the front page, though there are still a number of things that violate good principles of design.
So what’s still wrong?
And if Yahoo! fails, it risks going the way of other sites – like Digg and Gawker – who lost traffic following terrible redesigns. The only difference: Yahoo! can’t afford it.