BBC Homepage Redesign
The Mission:
How can the BBC get their chosen target audience to spend more time on the BBC THREE website? The BBC is currently in the process of reviewing
the design of the BBC Three site and content provision through iPlayer, Programme pages and social media. This brief was released by the BBC but was not a paid job. With the redesign I include a marketing campaign to promote the new interface.
Looking Deeper:
Based on the existing BBC homepage, it was rated highly by users when it comes to having high-quality content as well as helping them understand what’s going on in the world today. This means users are expecting something that looks trustworthy and direct.
When contemplating the purpose of the homepage, one can relate it to a hotel lobby.
The lobby is an essential part of every hotel but not the place visitors stay. I wanted to approach the homepage as a tasting platter to all the products the BBC offers while still enticing them to ‘sign up’ and browse around the site.
While more and more consumers are getting their news and entertainment through social media and mobile apps I thought it was of utmost importance to create a more interactive homepage while still keeping the navigation fairly simple. Inspired by SnapChat Maps, I created an ‘interactive headline’ function where users can hover around the map and see where are the hotspots are and what is happening in the UK and around the world.
To delve even deeper, users can click coloured icons to quickly sift through headlines based on what they want to see. The default will be ‘Top Stories’ which are the most popular and clicked on headlines across the site. Then the user can toggle between ‘Business’, ‘Politics’, ‘Science & Tech’, and ‘Entertainment & Culture’.
Desktop
Mobile
Tablet
The Outcome:
I wanted to boil down the Navigation bar and make things more easily accessible without an unnecessary amount of scrolling. To achieve this I created widgets with the most sought after information: the weather based on location and the latest updated score of the big match. To encourage the user to visit BBC’s entertainment services I included widgets which direct them to whatever’s most popular or most suggested to them on iPlayer and BBC radio.
Lastly, I included a video slider as audio-visuals are more digestible and require less time and effort for the user in comparison to reading an entire article. Having an instant
play application after each video will also increase the time spent on the website.
To promote the re-design I thought a Print/Media Campaign would best fit the concept behind the reworked homepage.
I decided to create a ‘BBC Newspaper’ which will be distributed in the proposed third touch point: a guerilla marketing campaign. BBC explains its mission as informing, educating and entertaining. I feel that this campaign is a combination that will achieve all three. The ‘BBC Newspaper’ will be distributed using a mixture of grassroots and street marketing.
The BBC has deep roots in history, this campaign is a nod to tradition and word of mouth news, while still releasing a modern message. The campaign will include paperboys dressed in old-timey clothing scattered across London at busy checkpoints. They will distribute these newspapers which are advertising the website redesign. This stunt will hopefully create some buzz on social media. The stunt will all be filmed and released as a promotional video.