You say you don’t visit Gawker sites much anymore since they unveiled their dramatic redesign? You’re not alone.

A few weeks ago, Gawker Media disputed reports that its traffic had plummeted due to the redesign recently implemented across its blog network. And Gawker boss Nick Denton had even recently made a cash bet that the relaunch wouldn’t cost him page views.

But at Thursday’s paidContent conference, Denton acknowledged that his numbers have in fact suffered due to the makeover…”We’re probably down by about 25 percent,” Denton told Reuters blogger Felix Salmon during a Q&A session. “I’m pretty confident we’re gonna be coming back.”

When I’ve needed to visit Gawker sites in the last few weeks (if I wanted to see, for instance, what their commenters were saying about the iPad 2 yesterday), I’ve gone straight to their mobile sites because their main sites are so confusing. That is not the ideal user situation. The takeaway from all this should be that expecting your users to learn the byzantine ins and outs of your new layout and commenting system is probably not smart business.

12 replies on “Gawker Traffic Way Down Since the Redesign”

  1. I switched over to The Awl and The Hairpin, both of which are much less cynical (snark overload at Gawker, holy shit) and easier to browse.

  3. @cat & beard: I also like crushable.com
    I think it fits in with those.

    I think my biggest beef with the gawker redesign is the giant ads in the main content area. The stories just seem so narrow and constricted.

    Also, Denton was so confident that they weren’t going to lose hits that he bet on it. And now he’s confident that the numbers will come back. Confident or not, I don’t believe in him!

  5. I’ve been wanting to stop reading their site after their repeated antics (http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared… being the most recent), but their recent site un-design finally gave me the incentive. I still had Lifehacker in my RSS feed up until today, but I’m fed up with too many of their posted links referring to other shitty Gawker sites.

    If you have to convince your readers how great your new design looks, maybe it doesn’t look so great. To me, it looks like the 2011 edition of frames.

  6. If you type in “/classic” after the url, Gawker is more readable. Works with all their sites — Jezebel, Lifehacker….

  8. I do seriously wonder what sort of usability studies and prototyping– if any– went in to that design. It does seem like every major “improvement” of the last year or two has mostly just added suck. At least we still have Google Reader.

  10. Awww. You sad digital victims. I feel so bad for you. Just when you’d gotten used to an online format it changed. These damn new fangled web things. It’s like poor grandma when they remodeled the Fred Meyer. No good can come of it I tell you.

  11. Tergiversation! My life has now gained proper perspective through the power of subtle mockery. From now on I shall only cathect those ideas of utmost import and apologize forthwith for all previous frivolity; particularly, it seems, when matters of the digital realm are at hand.

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