Change in a big portal is not something to be taken lightly. The new Yahoo! homepage, which is now close to launching, is an attempt to revitalize the way people see the company and the services it offers, and to provide users with a new starting point to their online world.

In this post, we take a look at what has changed between the old and new layouts, and share some thoughts on what might be the next steps important for the team in charge of the portal homepage to take. Read on.

Content organization

The new Yahoo! homepage focuses on personalization and on delivering what’s important to the visitor, fast. In looking at both the old and new versions of the page side-by-side, it becomes clear that Yahoo! paid some attention to how people navigated their layout, and what parts of it got the most attention. The result was the reorganization of the content categories (Yahoo! services), moved from the top of the page and into the left, filtering out (to a hidden layer shown on demand) those that got the less attention.

The tabbed approach to the features area (Featured, Entertainment, Sports, Money) is a good metaphor to have more valuable content in while taking less space. However, I expect some people to be confused by how content is split between the four areas, and how the sub-stories are picked for each section. While this new organization is easy to get used to, some people might prefer featured news from specific areas like Health on the homepage without having to click through to the health area. User customization might be the key here.

The same tabbing scheme is used for the news section (In the news, World, Video). Here, the organization is much easier to understand – even though the difference between “In the news” and “World” may sometimes be slim (at the time of this writing, these two tabs shared 3 out of their 8 stories). In a small note, I might move the stock widget to the marketplace section below for two reasons: it’s not tabbed, meaning it’s always visible (people who’d use it would prefer it that way), and it makes more sense from an organization perspective.

Personalization

The highlight of the new design are the personalization features. During the last year or so, we’ve seen a lot of focus on productivity dashboards, with the slow rise of personalized homepage solutions from all the major players. Yahoo! has decided to give a first step into integrating personal features into their portal.

I don’t think the transition to a user-centric Yahoo homepage is complete, and can only hope they figure out the best way to provide me with content I care about right on the homepage, to save me the time browsing, looking for it. There’s a few ways that can happen, which would be subject of a whole different post, but Y! seems to be on the right path.

Personalization makes sense because it makes the Yahoo! homepage cross the boundary from “informative” into “utilitarian”. I don’t feel compelled to visit a page if it doesn’t provide me with information I actually need, so by integrating things that are either close to my business life or close to my heart to the homepage I’ll be visiting more often.

So, all this to say that the Yahoo Mail, Messenger and Local integration is the first step into what can be a pretty interesting homepage, tailored to the individual user. I know how change in big organizations can be troublesome and difficult, but can only hope Yahoo realizes the potential of full homepage personalization, and runs with the idea. Because we don’t need a My Yahoo, we need a Yahoo that’s more mine.

Concluding thoughts

Little has been said about the design itself – focusing on the new experience seems to logical given the changes -, but the main reason is because it’s clean enough to appeal to Yahoo!s broad audience. There are a few juicy details about it, like the possibility of picking a wide or slim layout, as well as changing the predominant color from a blue/grey into green, yellow or orange. Did I talk enough about personalization already? Right.

The overall conclusion is that this is a win for Yahoo. The new page is clean, relevant, and well designed. The job of the Design and User Experience team at Yahoo! isn’t easy – the amount of information that needs to be managed is huge, and that task is not to be taken lightly. I take my hat off to them for the step forward, and can only hope they continue to improve the homepage based on relevance. Because I need to know what’s important to me, all the time.