This morning, we launched a new version of our Home Page. Prior to arriving at this design, we tested a variety of layouts and concepts with audience members. The one you now see is a combination of the response from our research and our new editorial goals for the site.
Our first goal was to make the site easier for you to use and to find the content you're seeking with less effort. We changed the sitewide navigation in the header to feature at-a-glance style pulldown menus. No more annoying flyouts that are hard to get to!
We heard loud and clear that the rotating background art was visually pleasing, so we decided to keep that. The existing large rotational promo unit, which we call the Marquee, was also favored over other layouts so that's staying as well. These two elements should be familiar to you regular MTV.com users.
Secondly, we wanted room on the page to deliver you more timely, relevant content both from MTV as well as from others across the web. That was the motivation behind The Daily Fresh module. Multiple times a day, we'll be handpicking fun, cool things that we think you'll enjoy. (So keep checking back!) Very soon, there will be a way for you to tell us about cool things you've found as well. We know that you guys are in the know too.
The Daily Fresh will also be a way for us to spotlight and highlight our audience--that's you. We might pull out a good comment from a music video, or find a cool photo or video uploaded by our community members to their profiles and put it on the home page. We've got to call out talent when we see it. You guys are a creative bunch and you deserve to be seen.
Just a few other things. MTV.com is now the front door to all our our brands: MTV, MTV2, mtvU, MTV Tr3s and MTV Music. We wanted to be sure that MTV.com's home page reflected what all the brands were up to because there's a lot going on. We're continuing to work on ways to better connect with you and help you connect with your friends and other shows and music fans. In fact, we're launching Facebook Connect on the site soon which will make it much easier for you to lend your voice and share content. And because someone has to pay the bills, we'll be working with our advertising partners to innovate and experiment with new ad models.
Please let us know what you think. Leave us comments below--we'll be checking!
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