What's Changed on the Seeking Alpha Website? 58 comments
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Today we're launching some significant improvements to the Seeking Alpha website. The goal of the changes -- as always -- is to make Seeking Alpha more useful for our readers.
Here are the key changes:
• New home page design, with clearer designation of top headlines, easier access to key topics such as long and short ideas and most popular articles, and improved presentation of watchlists and Market Currents, our coverage of breaking news.
• New Sector Dashboard, showing the latest Seeking Alpha articles by sector in one easy view.
• New design for article pages (example), including a more readable font, and improved navigation with a clear link to the home page and a new area below the search box for "Quick Links".
• New Transcript Center, showing the latest and most popular transcripts, convenient tools for searching transcripts by phrase or finding them by stock ticker, and links to pages showing transcripts by sector.
• Transcript Sector Pages (example), showing transcripts by sector, with navigation to the main page for that sector and the key themes for the sector.
• Redesigned Sector Pages (example), with clearer display of latest articles and improved navigation for sector themes, as well as a box in the lower part of the page showing most recent transcripts for that sector.
• Improved usability for watchlists (requires log in), including clearer display of recent watchlist articles and easier management and set up of watchlists. Watchlists allow you to track your favorite authors and stocks of interest.
We're not done. Over the next few weeks, we'll be rolling out other improvements. In the meantime, we greatly value your reactions and recommendations -- please feel free to leave a comment below. Our design and tech team worked hard on these changes, and all of us welcome your feedback.
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This article has 58 comments:
Agree with Emerson. But do appreciate all the effort you all are putting in to make SA a great website. However.....(there's always a 'however'!), one aspect of the old format that I found invaluable was the chronological order on the All/Other Articles page. Here are three reasons why that was important:
1.) If I missed, say, Sunday's posts I could step through the Articles backwards until I found them.
2.) The previous format also included the author's name, many of whom I've come to be familiar with, and tended to help me prioritize my desire to read.
3.) There are times that it's nice to know if the article was posted in the early a.m. hours or late in the day (with more 'real-time' information).
Overall, the previous format, with all articles in chronological order, with author's name, helped me efficiently sift through the daily content for the nuggests of most interest to me, saving me valuable time. In addition, I can't help but feel I'm missing things! For example, today's Andrew Wilkinson article can't be found on the Sector Dashboard.
Thank you and hope you are able to merge the good of the 'old' way with the good of the new way...
Regards,
-David
Some questions:
Do you find the "Quick Links" below the search box useful?
Any thoughts on Market Currents (you can find it via the quick link to "Breaking News")
Have you set up watchlists? Any feedback on them?
Possible solution: on the Dashboard page include organizational break-downs besides just by sectors:
1.) Op./Ed.
2.) Options
3.) China/India
4.) Europe
5.) Africa/Middle East
6.) Mining
7.) Statistical/Technical Analysis (Bespoke, Luby, et al?)
In the meantime, you can find those articles under their respective sectors.
Did you try setting up a watchlist for the authors you most like? If so, how was it?
Thank you for writing back. I'm going to postulate that the reason there aren't more folks giving feedback is that they can't find your original post once it scrolled off of the home page...
With regards to your comments:
Yes, a page "with all the articles in reverse chronological order, with author names as well" would be perfect!
Two thumbs up on the Market Current's it is w/o a doubt one of the best parts of your site and what I take my first sip of coffee to each a.m.
I do have a Watch List set up and I do like it. I find though that I have to pick only my top favorite stocks and authors otherwise I will overwhelm the small Watch List window and miss articles if I'm away for a few hours. That is likely why I relied so much on the reverse chronological order I previously had access to.
Thanks again and good luck!
-David
Thanks again for your feedback -- it's really appreciated. On watchlists, we've got 2 views:
Abbreviated watchlist on the home page
Full watchlist view when you click on the link in the "Quick Links" box below the search box on any page.
If you try the latter, will you let me know if it helps?
Great job, am eager to see this project evolve and improve!
Cheers,
-DW
I also think the Market Currents is great.
You need to provide a way to go back chronologically!
The Realist - couple of questions for you:
(1) What are your thoughts on the Sector Dashboard? seekingalpha.com/secto... What we've tried to do here is show you all the latest articles, but in a more digestible form than having to wade through a stream of undifferentiated articles.
(2) You wrote: "I also miss the author's name as over time I have come to recognize the ones I like the most." Have you tried setting up a watchlist with your favorite authors? If so, how useful is it?
Can you provide more color on the sector dashboard -- why is it less helpful to you than wading through a (reverse) chronological stream of unsorted articles?
Add me to the list of those who prefer the old SA.
To all readers who have been negative: please give the change a little while to settle in before you swear off the site. You have been used to the old web design and how it works for a long time now so the change is completely foreign and will always seem horrible if you liked the old one. There can be added benefits to this design that will make using the site easier, they will just take time to discover. I already think the Market Currents is pretty cool. It's like loving an old team uniform and you automatically hate the new one, then a month letter you forget the old one and the new one seems totally normal.
I have loaded a few authors in the watch list and it looks fine, the question will be is whether I change my habit and use it. It seems useful for now so lets see how it works. I assume I will probably go to it at least once a week to make sure I did not miss anything by the guys I like. I just went back to the home page and saw them listed there on the right. I like it. If I am rushed for time and go to the site my favorite authors and any new articles are listed right there.
The thing about authors is there are a few that I will read whatever they write, but I now recognize most of the names and seeing the name along with the title of the article helps me make my decision on whether to read the article or not. The title might seem interesting but then the author name may tell me not to read it. Or the article seems off my radar but the author name makes me take a shot. There are so many articles that we can't read them all, whatever helps us decide on which one to click on is great.
I am starting to like the sector dashboard, but I think it might be something I will turn to when I am short of time or want to focus on something specific. I have been using it for a little while today and it works fine, plus when you click on the more link at the bottom it takes you to a list of all the articles in that sector labeled the old way, in reverse cronological order with author.
Does that sector board cover all articles written that day? Why not have all articles written on the current day listed under the sector, if there are only a few articles that day then have a minimum of ten articles under each sector and have a date separator. It lets a user know how much potential reading he has that day. The one thing about the old reverse chronological order was that you had no clue how many articles you had to scroll through that day. Also note that we might come to the site Sunday night so just listing one day on the weekend might not be great.
I do enjoy scrolling through all the articles because in reading Seeking Alpha I am looking for ideas and information, micro and macro, so there are no limits to what I want to read. As a previous poster wrote, I don't invest by sector. I did not even focus much on your old front page, I went straight to the list of all articles.
The truth is that there is no reason to get rid of the sector board, there is no downside to having it, it provides one more way to search. It might be cool to have an option of looking at all articles written on that day, or a date range, or use a cookie to figure out my last visit time and offer me an option of reading all articles published since I last visited.
I just spent a little while looking over the home page again and I am fine with it. It is straight forward and easy to use. Left side is Market Currents, updating and quick hits like a ticker. Right side is my watch list authors. I never understood the middle section in the old site either, what constitutes "Opinion & Analysis." How are those articles any different than every other article on the site? Aren't they all Opinion and Analysis? How do you decide which articles get that top billing? I always went right past this and right to the chronological list as many other commentors said.
Then you have the box within the Opinion & Analysis section, what is up with that? How do you decide what goes in there? Once again, I never am tempted to read this article any more than the others listed. It is just another article, why not at least add a heading, rather than a link at the bottom to "more biotech articles" why not have a heading in the top of the box that said "Biotech on Seeking Alpha." It just seems that you are using the most valuable section of your page, center above the fold, for random articles chosen who knows how, and do not change as often as new articles are added. I understand some articles should not merit front and center so this might be difficult. As for the link to "See all of today's headlines by sector" why not just a second link under that, "See all of today's headlines by time" that would solve a lot of complaints. You can also consider making this section "Most popular articles" and let your users decide what articles are front and center based on how many reads or comments they have.
There was a specific reason I came to Seeking Alpha. It's gone.
I tried it, but it seems too tedious to sort through articles by topic. I feel like I'm missing out on lots of instant, relevant information from a variety of viewpoints. I noticed that there are less comments by readers, so it appears that I'm not the only one that feels this way.
Once the experimental design has a test run, let people have the choice between the old format and the new.
Thanks!
Sorry, we know what we like and what we need to find a site useful. Imposing your ordering scheme on my work habits doesn't work for me. This was a great site with a simple listing of posts, time of posting and stocks mentioned. I could get on the site and spend an hour to get my work done. Then, off to other things. Now, it takes longer and it's not as useful (lots of stuff I already seem to have missed because I didn't look in the right place). Why you couldn't provide the old approach for those of us who prefer that I don't understand. Hard not to get the sense you'd rather not have me on your site.
Even Microsoft (yes, the Darth Vader of the PC world!) provided for a new format and a classic format for the Control Panel in Vista. Guess I need to find a new site.
I've thought more on this and realize that I, and most of your readers, are NOT on SA for a specific sector or topic. To be able to broadly screen the daily market information in a non-quantifiable or categorical way was crucially important. I cannot make a watchlist that captures the broad sweep I used to do each day on SA to measure the market's pulse. I would wager that most users are the same: you just can't simplify our interest in a Watchlist. Am very eager to have the reverse chronological article page linked in soon!
The general tenor of the comments above captures far better the concerns I tried to express when I emailed directly to the SA Website comments.
DaveW is especially on point:
"To be able to broadly screen the daily market information in a non-quantifiable or categorical way was crucially important. I cannot make a watchlist that captures the broad sweep I used to do each day on SA."
Ditto for me.
Given the preponderance of negative feedback, I wonder just how the new format was user-tested.
1. Provide a view whereby you can see a stream of all the latest articles, unsorted by sector and showing author names, and pagination so you can go back in time. Make sure that page is easily accessible from the home page.
2. Add authors to the sector dashboard.
Is this correct?
Then set up a poll and let people vote or something.
But put the original view back! Put it back the way people like it while you think about what you want to do.
You are correct. Do those two things, and we'll be happy again. And in the future, why not try putting up a link to a beta of the new view and get some feedback BEFORE changing the site.
I appreciate your openness to all of the feedback and willingness to incorporate changes.
So, a big YES to your two proposed changes and I too will be content again! I also like User 185354's idea of flying a 'beta' page view for feedback before lighting the prototype SA rocket.
1. Have you tried setting up a watchlist? Have you noticed you can add authors to the watchlist from any article page (see the "Add to watchlist" button below my photo on this page), and stocks from any quote page? How is the experience generally?
2. Many of our readers are heavy users of transcripts; I don't know if that applies to any of the readers who have commented here. But even if not, have you tried the new transcripts center, and in particular the search?
3. What do you think of the new "Quick Links" section below the search box (see top right of this page)?
4. Any recommendations for changes to the Market Currents home page, which you can reach via the "Breaking News" quick link?
Thanks again for your feedback and suggestions.
I appreciate your query to us, but you seem to miss the point. We don't use the site in the way in which you apparently want us to do so. We're not into watchlists, we're not into the Market Currents home page, we're not into doing something more with an author than what you had on site before--which was great! If you want to add these features somewhere, fantastic. Maybe new readers will be interested in them. We're not. We did like the links you had previously for each article including links for the author's previous articles.
As for the transcripts, I've used some of them, but that's not why I come to the site. (And I probably register as one of the heavier transcript users, but it isn't the reason I've been coming back to this site, often many times during the day.) That temporal list of postings is the attraction, and what you had was great. Why not restore what you had and add this new front end as a "For sophisticated readers" or something like that. The new features may be of interest someday to someone, but not now, not here, and not me.
And as for the quick links, again, you had a good product before. Sure, it can be improved, but not by adding bells and whistles for the sake of bells and whistles. Unfortunately, that's how it looks and feels when trying it. As for the quotes, it's not the reason I come to this site. If it were, maybe I'd be willing to do a thorough review of it, but it isn't.
It seems the common theme running through the comments here are generalists versus specialists. Your previous blogroll appealed to generalists and these are the people making the comments here; I would keep an author/date organization with less-targeted ads for us generalists and the more highly-sorted organization for the specialists with the more lucrative, highly-targeted ads you desire. You win both ways.
You want the watchlists because of the info it gives *you*, right?
Most of us will have their watchlists somewhere else already.
I am with all the commentators that want the article stream as natural and free of editor preference as possible.
One feature that would help separating chaff from wheat would be a reader-rating system of both articles and comments.
There are some wierd theories floating round here: our goal is simply to build the best possible service for our readers. We're not trying to "get you" to do anything (and certainly not to register or give us information for our own purposes). We want to give the different groups what's best for them.
According to what you've written, you don't have a group of stocks or portfolio that you track, you're not interested in following particular authors, you're not interested in news about the market, and you don't want any sort of filtering or sorting of articles. That makes you an important group of readers for us, but a minority.
We got extensive feedback on the old home page, and found that as the volume of articles we publish rises, a large group of readers were alienated by the feeling that the old home page was "overwhelming." They wanted more help identifying the most topical or best articles. That, for example, is why we've given greater prominence to "Most Popular" on the new home page.
Similarly, an extremely large group wants to be able to track our articles on stocks or authors they follow in a watchlist or with email alerts. To provide that most effectively, we need to be able to store their choices, and that means requiring registration.
The good news is that we can cater to every group. We'll provide a home page for you guys that shows you a stream of articles with author names in reverse chronological order. That stream can be entirely unfiltered and can show author names as it did before.
Because this was the functionality that we removed, it's not surprising that this is the focus of all the comments here. And that's exactly why we invited feedback: our testing and analysis of our site stats can show what's best for the majority of our users, but can miss the needs of an important groups.
That's why your feedback is helpful and important, and allows us to provide what you'd like.
Just 2 minor comments that may be useful. I'm a reader of your excellent site and not a poster. First let me tell you I found the ETF Investment Guide and ETF Selector sections particularly useful for me, and especially all the discussion about building a core ETF portfolio.
My comments are:
1. Yes, an unfiltered stream of all articles in reverse chronological order, with author names as well, would work well.
2. Sorting information or data by Sector is useful for some purposes, it is particularly helpful to me. When looking for articles on a specific sector, industry, or topic, a Search on a major company symbol or keyword has returned satisfactory results.
Just my 2 cents. Keep up the great work -- thanks!
With all due respect, I beg to differ on your perception of our desires and preferences:
"you don't have a group of stocks or portfolio that you track, you're not interested in following particular authors, you're not interested in news about the market"
"That makes you an important group of readers for us, but a minority."
How did you come to this conclusion when only a couple people said they weren't interested in following authors, stocks and ETFs, and only one said they aren't interested in Market Currents? When I read over all of the comments I find a vast majority follow authorship, but not in a binary, all or none, fashion. I, and others from the sound of it, have authors prioritized, on a scale of 1 to 10 let's say, with 1 being unkown /no interest and 10 being of highest interest. I will be putting my 10's on the watchlist, but if I were to include my 4-9s on the Watchlist yes, it would become more useful (and 'busier')......However... would miss many of the surprises, ideas/events I was not expecting to learn and not even looking for. It's those gems that make my day and would miss if depending on a watchlist or third-party edited content. Who want's to pull every sub-menu down to hunt for these gems?
I am adding this not to be argumentative but to see if we can get closer to being on the same page. In time, I'm betting most will use the watchlist in addition to the retro-chronolgical, unfiltered article pages as concerted tools. I can't imagine anyone not liking Market Currents, it's a fabulous addition, well done.
Now, the only thing missing here is a chance to for us all to meet for brats and beer at my place! I think we'd all have a great time with very lively, but good natured discussion. (even the guy who thinks you're trying to collect our consensus watchlist for some sinister reason?? For his info, Motley Fool's CAPS would be a better way to go with that anyway).
Cheers guys,
-Dave
DaveW's last post fairly well sums up my feelings.
I too, with all due respect, beg to differ on your perception of my desires and preferences:
"you don't have a group of stocks or portfolio that you track, you're not interested in following particular authors, you're not interested in news about the market"
I do follow a group of stocks (elsewhere), I am interested in particular authors, and am looking for the news captured by the wide cast of the SeekingAlpha net.
I doubt I'd ever log in, set up any watchlist on SA (I do that elsewhere) or use any of the new bells and whistles.
Please, right next to "See articles BY SECTOR" just put a second link "See ALL articles" that takes me back to the old reverse chronology format and I'll be happy ever after.
As it is now, I might click on one of the top headlines and then move on to other news websites, whereas formerly I'd keep SA open all day on my desktop and check frequently for the latest articles.
I'd resolved in my earlier replies to your comments to listen to your feedback and not use this as an opportunity to tell you the rationale behind some of the current and upcoming changes. But it now strikes me that those who commented here might welcome more explanation. Here goes.
The core navigation challenge we're facing is that the number of articles we publish each day continues to rise sharply over time. Despite the fact that we reject a large number of articles, we've seen a dramatic increase in the number of articles submitted to us, including by hedge fund managers and others who aren't publishing elsewhere. Excluding conference call transcripts, we're now publishing 150-200 articles each weekday, and we expect the number to continue to rise.
How do you make that volume of articles navigable? We publish many articles before the market opens, so while there's a constant flow of new articles during the day, there's a substantial mass of new articles first thing in the morning. That poses two challenges: (1) Many (most?) users don't want to browse through pages of unsorted headlines, and as a result many people told us that the old home page was 'overwhelming' or 'unmanageable'. (2) Contributing authors don't get exposure on our home page because their headline rolls off the home page before the market opens, or even if it's published later in the day, it's quickly superceded by newer headlines. As a result of these two challenges, we realized that a simple reverse chronological list of articles will become more and more unsatisfactory for many of our readers as the number of articles we publish continues to grow.
To help people find what's useful for them, we have to offer a great browsing experience and also more personalization. Personalization is the easy part: watchlists. The big decision there was to allow readers to track authors as well as stocks, and to make it really easy to add stocks and authors to your watchlist as you browse the site.
Getting "browsing" right is harder. The stats tell us that the current navigation in the top bar dropdowns isn't working. So we've designed a set of dashboards that allow you to see a large number of headlines grouped by themes. Very soon, you'll see us replace the top bar drop-down navigation with clickable links to these dashboards, from which it's really easy to find the individual themes, sectors or topics in more depth. The Sector Dashboard is the first of these dashboards. But don't despair if you don't browse by sector -- there are others that offer different views that we'll show you soon.
An important result of these dashbaords is that headlines stay in view for much longer, instead of rolling off the home page as soon as new articles come along.
Your feedback has been enormously helpful in a few ways. First, you've said loud and clear that even if we dramatically improve the overall navigation with a series of dashboards, you *still* want a reverse chronological view. So we're providing a clear link to that from the home page. Second, we'd assumed that to make the dashboards as scan-able as possible, we should omit author names; but you've told us again that author names really matter. So we're restoring them. And third, you've told us that the home page doesn't feel alive enough without the constant bubbling of new headlines in real time.
Thank you again for your help, input and patience.
David
It was good to hear your POV, your changes make a lot of sense. It's obvious that the site can morph into a win-win format to make everyone happy. Believe it or not there are a lot of us work-horses our here that have no problem sifting through the 100+ article that you put online in the early a.m. hours. I'm done in 30 min., flagging ~5% of the daily articles and get a real, if not twisted, sense of satisfaction from the task!
Looking forward to the rev-chrono link when your IT guy gets back from Aruba..... [wink]
Take care,
DaveW
It was a real surprise to find out how many people there are who, as you put it, 'have no problem sifting through the 100+ articles that you put online in the early a.m. hours'.
One tech guy in Aruba? I wish we could manage with that (it would be a lot cheaper!). We have a fantastically talented team of 16 tech people, including design, CSS and programmers. Over the next year, you should see some interesting new things as a result...
BTW, on a personal note, I particularly appreciated the care and thoughtfulness you put into your comments here. Thank you.
Bye.
seekingalpha.com/artic...
I echo the Thanks for the link.
....and, you're welcome, it was my pleasure.
Dave
- David
On Jun 15 05:16 PM blungrn wrote:
> Why did you remove the "My Stuff" tab from the dashboard? I used
> that several times a day for a quick snapshot of my portfolio and
> to help track stocks I was interested in. Now all that convenience
> is completely gone. Why? It kind of upsets me.