The New Microsoft.com: What were they thinking?

Over the last few years Microsoft has been taking a PR hit. After revising their website in December of 2007, Microsoft is now testing a redesigned homepage that is backwards in terms of usability and design.

One of the first things you notice about the new Microsoft homepage is the position of the main elements. From the main navigation at the top, to the drastically changing left margin, Microsoft’s previous website was much more usable, organized, and beautiful.

On the old website, the main navigation was on the right to give focus to the main content to the left. The highlighted content stood out among all the rest and was both colorful and bold. On the redesigned site, the main content does not stand out and is not aligned with the main navigation. What’s frustrating as a user is that the secondary content below is indented on both sides even more than the main content, making the page seem top-heavy. Additionally, the main navigation feels scrunched into it’s container and selecting an item reveals merely a large lists of information. The strength of the previous navigation was the use of images and text when clicking an item. As a whole, the previous design was easy to follow and intuitive, but the new page is difficult to browse and sloppy.

Speaking of sloppy, the actual items within the page are not aligned evenly. While the main navigation is about 82 pixels from the left and right edges, the Microsoft logo and slogan differ by 10 pixels. The location marker on the top right of the page is similarly misaligned with both the navigation and the slogan. The highlighted content below the navigation is about 6 pixels too short on the right.

You might be asking, Michael, don’t you think you are nitpicking a bit? The answer is no. If you look at any good corporate web design, the alignments, the colors, even the fonts are chosen for a reason. Sites like Apple.com or NVIDIA.com are simple, clean, and effective at bringing users to the content that’s most important to them. The new Microsoft.com is only a shadow of it’s previous self and fails to adhere to the number one rule of web development: content first.

As a means of demonstrating my point, I have done a quick touch-up of the new Microsoft.com. I altered alignment and spacing mostly in an effort to stay true to the new design, but you can see what even subtle changes can do to improve a design.

I hope that over the next month their new homepage is reconsidered. As a company, Microsoft cannot afford to appear sloppy and out of touch with people, but right now they have a long way to go. I find it amazing that a company like Microsoft continually falls short. For the record, how could they not champion Windows Vista, which I added in my revision image as the first item? Despite it’s flaws, Vista is a good operating system and ignoring it does not exude much confidence. As a long time supporter, they need to stop cutting corners and start doing something differently. Right now, things just aren’t working:

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.