Redmond, Washington — Around four months back the Redmond software giant Microsoft offered a preview of its redesigned MSN homepage. Now as the MSN team has had time to test out different features and designs, and Microsoft on Tuesday formally began rolling out its latest MSN homepage, the revamped site features a simplified design, and includes tighter integration with social networks like Twitter and Facebook, a more prominent Bing presence, and more emphasis on local news.
Since Microsoft introduced a beta version of the new page in November, the Redmond Vole has not been wary about its ambition to take over Google in search dominance, hence, one of the major modification is putting the Bing search box front and center on the homepage. In an effort to de-clutter, the search bar is now longer and taller and sits atop the page alone rather than surrounded by links.
The old MSN — Click to enlarge.
Executives have witnessed a double-digit increase in the amount of Bing searches on MSN, this was partly effected through the use of a relevancy algorithm, which divides the MSN gathering into eight separate groups and then delivers different headlines to different groups depending upon their preferences, said Scott Moore, general manager of content and programming.
Microsoft has redoubled the prominence of its “Popular Searches” box on the right-hand side, highlighting more than a dozen stories for which users are currently searching.
Most apparent is the complete design overhaul. The new MSN butterfly logo, and the background is no longer blue — it is white. The cleaner appearance has larger headlines, bigger photos and half as many blue links. Really, MSN finally does not look like it is stuck in 2005.
MSN page previewed in November — Click to enlarge.
“The new MSN homepage removes the clutter with a clean, fresh design and offers search, news, local and social networking, all in one place,” said Erik Jorgensen, Microsoft’s corporate VP for MSN, in a blog post.
Jorgensen said Microsoft is unfurling the redesign in stages, “but all of our 100 million customers in the US will have the new homepage within the next few weeks,” he added.
MSN revamped homepage previewed on Tuesday — Click to enlarge.
While designing the new page, Jorgensen said Microsoft induced more than 70,000 pieces of consumer feedback, which ultimately led to about 30 new updates.
“Today marks an important milestone for us, but we are going to keep working hard to hear your feedback and deliver more great experiences across MSN,” he said.
In addition to the November preview, MSN introduced Local Edition pages, which are automatically personalized for a user’s zip code. “In just a few months, MSN Local Edition has increased to 5 million unique users while still in preview mode, with more than 40 percent of those users coming back every day,” Jorgensen wrote.
The company is also capitalizing on Twitter search integration deal that was announced in October to include a new TrendWatch feature that highlight’s the day’s most popular Twitter topics.
The company has a number of news partners, including local NBC affiliates and Hearst Television stations, whose news and videos populate the Local Edition. Microsoft also added more headlines. “We learned you adore lots of news headlines to choose from, so we added more tabs and made the navigation easier so you can easily access the wealth of information on MSN,” the company said in a blog post.
A preview is available at MSN’s preview page.
In the video below, Scott Moore, general manager for MSN content and programming, talks about the changes they made throughout the preview period.