What in the world have they done? Have you seen the new USAToday.com?  It's horrible! 

A lot of people have been talking about the great "social networking" additions to USAToday.com.   "Oh it's great… they've added this… and they've added that".  It's easy for people who don't frequent the site to look at these additions as a good thing.  If you don't use USAToday.com on a regular basis you might be impressed by all of the "forward thinking" of the USAToday.com web team.

As a long-time USAToday.com reader, I'm not at all impressed.   And I don't think this new version is going to work.  I'm not the only one who doesn't like it, either.  Read the comments to that post I linked to a further up.  Here are a few examples:

The new format is BAD< BAD<BAD. Why can't you leave things alone? As a past loyal reader, I am gone.

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Your revised website stinks. Why fiddle with something that was effective and communicative? I personally liked the stock market recap on the lead page. Your re-write has omitted a key feature.
USA Today was my home page. It won't be for much longer.

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If you wanted to get reader participation, you got it. I visit USA Today's Web site every day and have done so for years. But this redesign is horrible. The text is too big, and there's too much white, too much blank space. It's hard to read. It's unattractive. I really, really dislike it. It's hard to find the information. I think you can add some new features without such a radical redesign. And I think the comments below show that regular readers overwhelmingly dislike this redesign. I am sure it will be difficult to reverse such a decision, but your readers will be happy if you do so. If this redesign persists, I don't see myself visiting your site as often or at all. And I will miss it.

Are they trying to be Digg?  The reason Digg, and other related sites, work is because they allow outlandish stories.  Those are the ones people go with.  USAToday will continue to run the same kinds of stories it always has and try to get them popular.  But no one wants to Digg those types of stories.  The stories like that that do end up on Digg are only put there so people can get traffic back to themselves.

When is the last time you saw a real or non-linkbait story make the front page at Digg?

There has been such an overwhelming outcry of unhappiness from the USAToday reader base that I don't think the newspaper can ignore it.  Unless they want to see readership drop off, they'll have to respond.  I give it another week before they switch back to the old format and re-think their future strategy.

I've talked about the importance of testing over and over again.  This is a prime example of a company that should have tested.  Why didn't USAToday talk to its readers first?  Why didn't they test the waters and see if their customers would want any of these changes before they did this?  If you've ever wanted proof of what bad website design decisions look like… here you go. 

If I was handing out grades, the new USAToday.com would get an "F".  I'd fire whoever came up with it.  And for good measure, I'd fire the person who said they didn't need to consult their users first.

-Matt