Welcome to Mumbrella’s new look. Please excuse the eight year delay
Mumbrella has finally joined the 21st century with the first redesign in the site's history. Founder and content director Tim Burrowes explains the long journey to Mumbrella's new look.
Nearly eight years ago, shortly before I published Mumbrella’s first post, I made a slight miscalculation.
“Let’s get it launched, then in a couple of weeks, I’ll ask a mate in a design agency to do us a proper logo,” I told my business partner Martin Lane.
“For now, I’ll knock something up in Word.”
So I did.
For some reason, I seized upon the typeface Tahoma.
By then, we’d decided to call the website Mumbrella (a shortening of the phrase “everything under the media and marketing umbrella”). So I differentiated the word by making it all caps, except for the two Ms to represent media and marketing.
It was, after all, just a temporary measure.
And then we launched.
But the couple of weeks stretched slightly longer. Until today, in fact.
Initially I used a free WordPress template called The Journalist.
Sadly, the Wayback Machine internet archive didn’t capture the first day of Mumbrella, so the earliest version I have is about nine days in.
As you’ll see below, it was pretty basic, although the editorial issues were already beginning to establish themselves: Nielsen battling to maintain its stranglehold; Seven’s Olympics coverage; whether the IAB was representing only the interests of the big end of town; why social media guru Laurel Papworth was full of it, and so on.
Within a few weeks though, I borrowed a developer from the magazine whose offices I was camping in, and we knocked together a site. This version put together by Julien Perreard (who these days is in a big job in Cape Town) had three streams of content covering news, opinion and Dr Mumbo.
Again, the first days of that new look are gone from history (don’t believe people who tell you the internet is forever). And the earliest Wayback Machine screenshot I can find it is five months into the site, in April 2009.
At that point, I was declaring it to be the month that Twitter went mainstream in Sydney, reporting on the ratings for a new TV series called Mad Men, reflecting how Ten was the worst performing media stock of the year, and discussing how Coles was doing better advertising than Woolies. And I was also making the spectacularly wrong prediction that News Ltd would take its newspapers free.
But as you’ll see, it was basically the same website that until yesterday Mumbrella has continued to be.
We did come close to a big redesign once. In about 2011, I published a callout to the industry asking for help and had dozens of responses. For reasons I can’t recall now, we ended up going with a Brisbane agency which is long since defunct.
Initially, we tested their abilities by having them create a site for our new conference Mumbrella360. It was such a bad experience for both sides that neither of us ever spoke again of them redesigning the main site.
Meanwhile, I let it drift. It was a classic example of something that was always important but never quite urgent enough.
Generously, but incorrectly, people would from time-to-time praise me for our deliberately lo-fi design, where, they deduced, substance was being deliberately prioritised over style.
Along the way, in a bit of a panic when Google prepared to start penalising non-mobile sites, we threw together a mobile version. Which, as you probably know, sucks.
It would take a determined reader to even find the opinion or Dr Mumbo sections on our mobile site, and we don’t exactly make it easy to share content either.
To be honest, I’ve been surprised that for a publication of the communications industry, we haven’t had more criticism.
It perhaps helps to explain why, according to Google Analytics, we still only get 35% of our traffic on mobile. (We get 60% on desktop and 5% on tablet.) Admittedly, this is up from 28% at the same time last year, but still suggests that our readers prefer our desktop experience.
Meanwhile, our sales team were hitting an issue. While the local market that knows and supports Mumbrella tended to overlook our design flaws, for those advertisers based overseas we were losing out to rivals whose better design was getting them across the line instead of us.
So this time, we decided to do it properly.
A final impetus was Tony Faure joining us for a day a week as a coach to myself and Martin on how we run the business.
A former boss of both Yahoo and ninemsn in Australia, ex-board member of Business Spectator and Crikey owner Private Media, and current chairman of Junkee Media (among other things), Tony’s involvement with Mumbrella was pretty much conditional on us actually sorting out the look of the website.
The thing I found hardest to figure out was the best place to start – and I clocked up a couple more false starts and missed deadlines.
I’ve had far more experience running magazine redesigns than I have websites. That’s a relatively straightforward process – you write a lengthy document, explaining the position of the magazine in its market, who its readers are, and giving intricate detail on what you want each section of the magazine to achieve.
Two or three designers then pitch some key pages of the magazine design and you go with the one you like best (if you also like their price).
And it’s fair to say that from what I’ve learned about this process, I would do it differently next time.
With a site redesign, we had a number of key decisions to make. Not least of which was whether to stick with WordPress as our platform.
In recent years our site management has been done by a Hervey Bay based agency called The Code Company, which is run by a WordPress savant called Ben May.
By an amazing coincidence, the point a few years back at which Ben took on the responsibility, and moved us over to BulletProof’s servers, was also the point at which the site stopped crashing whenever we had heavy traffic.
Seeing your site fall over and not being sure how long until it’s coming back up leaves one with a horrible sense of powerless. I actually just felt a twinge in my stomach as I remembered it.
So I’ve come to revere Ben and his team not least for achieving that apparently simple thing of us not falling over any more.
But with a site reboot, there are implications for both the back end and, to put it in terms that designers would hate, the front end.
And you’ve got to make both bits work.
Plus, we were in a hurry.
Eventually, the right person for that design was recommended to us – Vanessa Ackland, who’s recently worked on the likes of Junkee and Mamamia.
The challenge we gave Vanessa was a tough one.
Normally she’d have spent some time working on brand strategy – not least because of our multiple sister brands like CommsCon, The Source and Publish that we’d like to bring more closely into the Mumbrella family. We’re late in heeding Adam Ferrier’s advice that the best number of brands is one.
But against Vanessa’s advice we wanted to plough on and redesign the site first.
The plan was that cheesy black-and-white Mumbrella umbrella would disappear, and the new masthead would simply be the word Mumbrella in the font we chose.
But then Vanessa had a breakthrough. Looked at from above, an open umbrella looks a bit like a marketing wheel.
Not only that, but it would give us the ability to create a logo in one set of colours, then adopt other colour sets for sister brands.
During that process, it dawned on us: this wasn’t going to be a simple redesign, but we were in fact now doing a full rebrand.
Which is what you’ll see over the coming 12 months as we gradually move all of our other conferences, directory, training and awards brands closer to Mumbrella. But those that are already launched, including June’s Mumbrella360 and Mumbrella Awards, July’s Mumbrella Sports Marketing Summit and September’s Publish conference will retain their existing branding.
Luckily for me, this rebrand coincided with the appointment of our first full time head of marketing in Danika Porter. She arrived late in the process, and got me out of trouble.
All those things associated with a rebrand – new business cards, email signatures, new media kits – have actually happened on time. And they wouldn’t have done if it was just down to me.
Well, I say on time.
A couple of launch dates came and went before we felt ready for our sales team to start taking it out to key clients. Martin (the money guy) and I (the content guy) argued a couple of times about what ad formats would work on the site for both readers and advertisers.
And even then, we didn’t quite get round to show it to everybody we would have wanted to before pushing the button. So to friends of Mumbrella who we didn’t get time to show it to ahead of pushing the button, my apologies.
But push the button we have now done.
As you’ll see, Tahoma is dead as our typeface.
Now Mumbrella’s headlines are in a font called Montserrat, while body copy in in a typeface called PT Serif.
But for our editorial team, the most important difference is that they now have more control over how we present our content to readers.
Under the previous design, everything appeared in strict chronological order. The only way of bringing something back up to the top, was to manually change the date or time of publishing.
This has become an increasingly big issue as size and expertise of our editorial team has grown. It can be frustrating to spend hours or days on an analytical piece, only to see it languishing in the side bar of the home page.
That said, it of course comes in a world where home pages are less important. Readers tend to drop in via social media or our daily email rather than the front door a lot of the time.
So we are no longer taking the chronological blog approach – now the editorial team can curate the top items on the home page themselves.
And we’ve done a few things to make it easier to stumble on other items, including – on both desktop and mobile – scrolling seamlessly on to the next article.
And of course, the mobile and desktop experience are now much more similar.
In terms of the reaction to the site, we’re actually not expecting or hoping for plaudits other than hopefully a recognition that the new offering is an improvement. The brief to Vanessa and Ben has been to simply make the reading experience a better one than before. I think they’ve pulled that off.
We’ve deliberately not sought out any elements of design for the sake of it. There are no unnecessary bells and whistles. If the design quickly recedes into the background, then it has done its job very well indeed.
You may also notice that we’ve now got a couple of larger ad slots. Again, I hope we’ve found a balance between giving our advertisers a chance to do something with high impact and creativity, and it not being intrusive for the readers. As you’ll see if you’re on the desktop, you can close the big billboard ad at the top of the page if you don’t want it.
You will, I hope, give us your feedback. What usually happens with any radical redesign is that at first everybody hates it, and then quickly gets used to it. That’s broadly what I’m anticipating.
But of course I’d still like to know what you think, either in the comment thread here, or, as you’ll see from the temporary link at the very top of the page, you can also update us on your thoughts privately.
I promise it will take us less than eight years to act upon your feedback.
Pretty self-indulgent – it’s like a never ending role of credits. Just get on with it.
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Congratulations on the new look. Already miss the reader comments listing on the right hand side of the page; that was a key element for me. Any chance of retaining something similar? Apart from that, site looks great and logo is a big improvement.
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If experience serves me correctly, you need to basically ignore the barrage of feedback (generally negative) you will get as people adjust to the new layout. A big redesign tests the mettle of any publisher!
Looks great and now the design matches the content in terms of strength.
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I use Mumbrella every day and as bad as the old design was it was familiar. I was initially apprehensive but I’ve only looked at it on mobile so far and it’s a massive improvement. Looking forward to seeing the desktop version. Welcome to 2016 Mumbrella.
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I love the new redesign. Visually it looks great, the UX is pretty good. Nice.
BUT… the big page takeover banners are everything that is wrong with digital advertising. Large, obnoxious and ugly as hell. What happened to smart marketing, native advertising, branded content?
These types of ads are the reason people are installing ad-blockers in droves and driving down ad dollars.
Disappointing.
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An inspired logo design, Vanessa!
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Great new look. Well done.
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I access your content via Facebook. So long as your thumbnail doesn’t look like Mamamia I can continue to respect your headlines without the eye roll.
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You’re not familiar with the author, are you? 😉
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Great logo, and nice redesign
But the redesign drowns in an ad that takes up at least 50%(!) of the screen. Less is more
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You do realise that it’s not mandatory reading, right?
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Congrats, Tim. As always, good to get honest insight into how you’ve done things. Its long overdue, but you succeeded in spite of the previous awful design – maybe now you’ll succeed in part because of the improved one.
Just one point: massive red tower ads were a bit of an eyestrain… made it pretty stressful reading a long-form article. Might have to find a balance there between advertiser attention and readers’ eyesight!
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Well done – not before time
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looks great but do please bring back the various comment parts from the right hand side like most commented, most recent etc plzzzzz
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Looks great Tim. Congrats on the upgrade!
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Always love a re-design – but I must say your Word effort was pretty awesome to stand this test of time!
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New look?
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Looks good. The auto-run video bullshit ads on other industry sites are way more irritating.
Just as a side note, before anyone suggests doing so, if you work in this industry and use an ad-blocker you are a fucking idiot (for using an ad-blocker).
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Hi — site is nice enough (although not as easy to scan as the old, blog style). But I think you’ve missed a trick by losing the “latest comments” and “most discussed” modules that used to sit in the RHC. Very often, the comments were the most instructive/entertaining content on the site and something I always looked out for….
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It will be interesting for you to compare the average amount of comments on this new look v the old. Without the summary on the right I am going to assume they will go down = engagement / interaction could decline. (On the home page when I look at the summary articles, there isn’t a number next to each (perhaps bottom right), indicating how many comments each article has obtained – that will help too.
I agree with the ad’s all over the page – this is what is wrong with digital advertising – (I am looking from a desk top perspective.)
Other that that, this looks good and good luck with it!
(It was still easy enough to post this comment…) 🙂
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Sorry, this nested as a reply to the wrong comment!
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so I would click on that one.
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Better if logo was circular and variation on the M.
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Congrats team! Oddly I was reading the site yesterday and literally thought ‘I love how it still looks the same’. Like visiting your childhood home!
As you say long overdue. Before I left in June 2014 I was telling clients within 6 months!! Mumbrella does things it’s own way in its own time, what continues to make it the most authentic voice.
Again congrats!
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Congratulations Mumbrella! Should you change the flavicon? I’ve still got the old black and white umbrella.
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Looking from a mobile it the ads are less offensive than desktop. I am finding the site super fast. I am still lost however with the discussion. I live going back to see who has commented and see what articles are trending on Mumbrella. If something can be done to signpost the most commented and latest articles, similar to old site: I will engage as much, or from mobile; more! Nice job guys!!
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I always like to see the number of comments next the article -it helps me decide whether to read it or not.
Best of luck with the new site
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These new Pizza Shapes are awful!
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First….really like the new logo.
Second….interesting to watch the reviewer become the reviewed. Typically there is some value in every opinion, some more than others.
Third….as you wade through the initial response take inspiration from a good old fashioned Theodore Roosevelt quote…“so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Fourth….Change, Count, Repeat
Enjoy the journey
JK
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I tried looking for this article today (Wed) on Mumbrella and couldn’t? I performed a variety of Google searches and eventually found it using the following string:
new look, “by Tim Burrowes”
On the old site I think that this article would have had far more comments by now, again because people can see which articles are trending / being added. The right hand nav was functional. This site has a lot of form and some of the function is missing from the old one – I believe.
On a mobile it is very fast, which is what you want. I would look at the nav and get that a little more reined in. Use science and test away and it will improve I am sure.
10 cents over.
Good luck and keep up the great work!
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I really liked the old site layout, but I understand the change. However as some have mentioned above, please display the Recently Commented / Most Commented lists and the Number of comments on an article. The comments can make the articles far more engaging.
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Well, given what you guys have achieved as a small business I’d say your priorities were probably in order! Congrats on the new look.
BK
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I’m too scared to buy a packet at the supermarket for fear of being chased with clubs and fire by angry Surry Hills villagers.
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@Richard Dirth spoken like [Edited by Mumbrella], with a Dirth of good will.
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++The Good
Awesome logo
Works at mobile
Ad product that commercial can actually sell (important internally no doubt)
Quartz-like ‘next article’ scroll
++The Bad
Too much information density stripped from homepage, it was the old-school information density that appealed (rookie mistake to rip it back, Homepage is still important declaration of voice, brand & as user compass – even as it’s traffic gateway role diminishes – qz.com famously launched with none and then returned the homepage)
Too many community signals stripped out, especially homepage (no evidence community lives here anymore)
Should have been brave enough to kill wordpress ‘sidebar’ in the article template.
++The Ugly
Someone please put a frequency cap on this violent red advertiser skin!
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Took eight years to read that article. Normally your editorial judgement is good, but no one really cares about your re-design process.
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Hi There,
I like the modern facelift of the website, everything looks more tidy and the typography is very appealing.
What I miss is: Where do I find the daily ratings unless there are not offered on the front page? When I search for “Ratings”, the search result is anything else than satisfactory.
Can I go back in time/backwards to search for daily ratings? Sorry, but I am lost here… 🙁
Bettina
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For me I think this is a massive missed opportunity for a few reasons.
The first reason is that at its core Mumbrella worked best when there was conversation, the advertising industry loves nothing more than naval gazing (much of the time anonymously!) The comments section often taking on a mixture of hate, love and spite on big topics. At its core comments from the industry drove viewership to the site. Its my opinion the new design doesn’t lend itself to engaging in conversation.
My second point is the fonts, click boxes and advertising is far too big. The site looks like it was optimised for 70 year old men who want to use their computer without their reading glasses.
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You have traded usability, readability and discovery for great big ads. You will still outstrip your rivals on numbers for now. But that lead will shrink significantly, as any redesign usually borks ‘the algorithm’ – and your numbers will dwindle. Remember what you are, not what you want to be sold as.
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I too favour the old design. But I’m a huge reddit fan. I like to look at all the story headlines fast. And this new design allocates a huge amount of realestate per story.
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Not a fan personally. Too much going on.
I much preferred the old design where it was easy to scroll through the homepage, get to the end and keep going. Now I feel like I’m drowning in stuff. Strip back some of the noise and make the comments more prominent.
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