Conventional wisdom can be misleading for online editors tackling newspaper website design. Traditional website design of UK papers, with lots of white space, neat boxes and strong page formation may not be the most profitable.

Most conventional news sites are designed with consideration that users don’t like to scroll. Thus most content is crammed intop the top 480 pixels of the screen. 24Sata in Croatia has even come up with a ‘no-scroll’ homepage design, which fits everything on one screen – and has proved successful so far.

By contrast, Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet’s opted for a website design with extremely long and narrow pages, that are “loaded with garish boxes and stories with enormous headlines stacked on top of each other,” reported the Press Gazette.

The site’s strategy is to make every page a front page, by including the front page at the bottom of every story page. Although seemingly unpleasant for users, this design becomes increasingly important as users directly come to stories through search engines and RSS feeds.

“Every single design rule that you have ever been taught has been broken here, but they are making more money than you will ever dream of,” said Mark Comerford, a new media lecturer at the University of Stockholm, speaking to regional newspaper online editors in the UK.

And yet Aftonbladet.se is Sweden’s second-largest site after MSN, with 3.5 million unique users. Its parent company, Schibsted, is arguably one of the world’s most successful newspapers groups in its transition to digital publishing.

The main point here isn’t that online editors should delve into Aftonbladet-style design, or that a no-scroll homepage is more user-friendly. But they should rid themselves of preconceptions, said Comerford:

“If there are other sites that violate everything that you would consider the rules of good design, and yet they work, then what can you learn from that?”

Source: Press Gazette