We've made some changes to the site.

This article explains what and why.

I'd welcome any feedback on these changes and indeed any new ideas you might like us to consider for next year...

Thanks.

Julian

Very nice, a much crisper feel and seems faster too

Very smart! One small improvement would be to ditch the Vodafone ad with that irritating jigging monkey - very offputting!

I'm certainly not the world's fastest typist but the letters on the screen seem to appear one or two seconds after I've typed them, does anyone else have this problem?

I've not noticed delayed typing...has anyone else?

We are working on the deployment of the latest software update to FWiSpace, so maybe that will help.

Thanks for other comments above.

Julian

Not sure if its a good idea to hide the Farmers Weekly Awards under Events, it deserves its own section, struggled to find it since the changes.

Other than that very good 

Thanks!

We did think hard about that and concluded that it was a compromise we needed to make BUT we fully intend to use other promotional areas on the site to raise the awards profile at the right times.

Julian

Sorry to be negative but i am not fully sure what has actually been changed - to me the site is not very user friendly if i was coming on and trying to find out about, for example, livestock reports where do i find them, they are difficult to access unless you actually know where to look the same could be said for the arable stuff.  The front page needs to be very simple and user friendly or it will but people off using the website and accessing the material via other sites such as googling sales reports ort whatever.  I hope this is of some help and sorry to be negative but i feel it is better to tell the truth than say how excellent it is - things must be looked at from a @daft laddie@ approach so that everyone can enjoy the site.

I must defend FWi.  I have tried the British Farming forum and found it to not be nearly as user friendly to me.  I like the FWi layout better, and all in all prefer this site. The new things recently introduced don't do much for me, but they aren't a bad thing either. 

I agree with you Kansas, although some people may find this site quieter than alternatives it is easier to keep tabs on up todate subjects, as there is not the daily debate on what colour tractor is better.

I like the new layout, am sure the website will develop more throughout 2008 and beyond.

My point is that with the farmers weekly trying to attract new people to the website it is not a user friendly home page - i have tried to get several people to use the site but they have found it very difficult to get around - especially when trying to find out what happened at a livestock sale - for those that are computer savvy then yes i am sure they will get there eventually but that is not the point it is trying to make it very easy to use for all standards of user.  To me the layout hasnt really changed the only thing that has changed are the tabs down the left are now blue instead of yellow

Keep it coming - all feedback is welcome. As journalists we want people to read what we've written - so if people can't find it we've all got a problem!

Bull power - you are right in that the general layout hasn't changed dramatically. But if you click on the more news button in the middle of the page you can then specify which sector you are interested in ie livestock, arable. We've introduced this in a bid to try and make it more obvious where stuff should be. Are you saying that is still too hidden?

Isabel - your first point is correct as some people will not be able to read your points as they are buried far too deep into the website and those people who are not very computer literate will never be able to find your article and will go and find the same information of another place i.e. FG or SF which i am sure is the last place you want them going!!  Secondly you have hit the nail on the head with these sectors still being too hidden - i think it has to be blindingly obvious where a punter has to go and read the articles or they will disappear somewhere else but i also think that things have to be keep very simple - for me the homepage is very busy and not very user friendly - there is just too much going on there and i would like to see people being directed to the sector they want far more easily and then being feed with much more info but try to get them to that place first of all - an example being the perth bull sales video - i found it much easier and quicker going to you tubes website than trying to direct myself through the FW page and i consider myself semi computer literate!! i also never knew about the stuff that was written as the sales etc were going on that would be a major attraction to lots of people but they would struggle majorly to find them - i believe in KISS Keep It Simple Stupid!!!

Thanks Bull Power.

You may be surprised but I actually agree with you...our ambition is to make our content more easily findable for users.

This first round of changes were only ever going to be relatively superficial as they haven't involved what I would call siginificant structural changes to the site...

...we are looking at the wider site structure and taxnomy, but as you can imagine that's a big project!

More specifically, the idea of making clearer that the news 'drop-down' offers news by sector is a good one and something we'll look at introducing.

The key thing is that now we have made more room for news sector 'home pages' these pages include up to six promotional boxes which our section journalists will use to flag up key features, opinion, blogs etc for their sector. So, for example, we will make more of the livestock sales blog on the livestock news page to help people find that content.

It's really valuable to have this exchange of ideas, and I hope by working with our users we can help develop the site into something which you all really love. It's a hard and detailed process, but we're committed to making continuous improvements. We;'ve had a good year this year, but we want to do even better in 08.

Thanks again.

Julian