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HP Redesigns Homepage And Misses Mark
By Reshma Kumar at April 10, 2008 10 CommentsHP recently redesigned its homepage www.hp.com. The previous iteration was predominantly blue with a navigation panel positioned in the middle of the page and which auto-rotated and changed colors - but, it still maintained the integrity of a conventional website.
The redesign is markedly different:
- It is mostly black. Interesting choice as black is usually considered edgier versus corporate. Plus, there is no sign of the previous blue so there is no continuity and this is okay if the brand is being transformed - which may be the case.
- The nav panel has moved to the bottom of the page but above the fold.
- The promotional area is much larger and dominates the entire page. It also has a control panel that appears small and is not immediately intuitive.
- The target market navigation panels popup after a delayed mouseover.
- The page falls below the fold. I’ve seen time and again in usability tests where users are peeved when forced to scroll beneath the fold on homepages.
- There are a lonesome ‘Resources’ flyout and ‘News’ scroller relegated to the footer of the page beneath the fold.
- There is a country site selector flyout that categorizes sites from “A through B”, “C through D”, etc. This breakdown is quite unconventional yet innovative but I think they might have out-innovated themselves here.
- There is an old-school ‘home’ icon. Today’s standard is that the logo is the link to home which most semi-experienced users understand. Their logo is also linked but the introduction of the ‘home’ icon is passe.
- There are three links at the top left of the page that have no mouseover effect and onmouseover automatically takes you to pages - without you clicking. Same behavior on the ‘home’ icon.
This redesign screams boutique microsite reminiscent of the early to mid 90’s when sites went off the deep-end trying to be different before reverting back to basics. What was interesting were the ads that appeared in the nav flyouts. I am sure HP’s usability testing and the like validated their design and user experience but I think they have missed the mark here by over-designing and foregoing usability.
BEFORE:
AFTER:
Labels: usability 2.0, user experience
10 Comments
Nice try, but anyone who thinks there were “boutique microsites” - much less commercial use of websites - in the “early nineties” opinion doesn’t mean much to me…
corporate web sites have never solved the dilemna of branding vs functionality.
in that sense the new HP design has moved more towards branding like the mid/late 90s - not early 90s.
agree with the post that the move is retrogade, HP could have designed for online business a-la-Google style of branding than doing a conventional corporate branding on the website.
but like i said earlier, corpoates have a dilemna - do they use the website for branding or to do online business. often they are not able to resolve it and move from one to the other
It takes forever to load; over 350K including 17 js files and a 50K image. Even on a wireless G it is slow. Dialup, forget it, you could die of old age before seeing the page. Many js warnings, undeclared variables, mistyped equalities, etc. The delayed menu items are disconcerting and to go back to the home page, mouse over the home icon and the page reloads completely, take a coffee break while you wait…
What on earth settings are you using that parts of this page fall below the fold? On both my laptop and desktop there are multiple inches of space left at the bottom.
I do agree that the usability of the site feels too clever for its own good. It was also an odd decision to roll out the new homepage design without bothering to carry it more than one more page level deep.
does anyone know what agency did the redesign?
Good question…not sure which agency did the redesign but would love to know.
And why would a “countries” list all be in English? Wouldn’t you use the native language for each, so that person immediately recognized their own? Maybe use both English and the native name — but why assume a Chinese user wants to see English and not the Chinese characters?
Agency? This screams Method
I am surprised at the level of outrage being directed at HP for trying some innovative, though definitely radial moves.
There are some key areas I think we can applaud, though I agree on the comments re the lang selector.
Finally someone is addressing what people use a company like HP for - buying new products, supporting ones you have and working out what else you can do (aka solutions) and lets relegate news, corp etc to the lower levels. It doesn’t reflect internal organization, supports task oriented nav as well as traditional routes and it’s pretty bold.
Well done HP, lets see how long it will be before people are looking to this as inspiration.
LOL at Bladefrog!