YouTube, the world’s most popular online video sharing site has launched its redesign today and Jungle have experiment with the new layout to bring you this review.
The design team at YouTube have been hard at work on putting the finishing touches to the new design, including a new homepage experience, which is now live for users to sample today.
The brand new version of YouTube’s homepage is centered around the ‘YouTube Guide’, this shows all new videos from channels that users are subscribed to. The homepage also boasts of a recommendations channel that they think users may like.
The new focus on the user experience is based upon viewing habits, as well as those that your friends are watching.
The Guide feature is not only available on the YouTube website but in a new development it will also connect viewers on a range of mobile devices and connected TV platforms, including Android, iOS, Playstation 3, and Google TV.
YouTube’s previous and long-standing design attracted many complaints, the main culprit being its design.
The feedback concerning the design and layout was based on there being too much in the way of distraction from the videos.
The videos, being the sole purpose of YouTube and the users visiting the site, was a big enough concern for the company who decided to redesign and address the issue.
Changes to the site have put the video content front and center when watching video content, although this central positioning has been dismissed by some users who claim their screens display the video content more to the left side of the page.
One user commented:
“Having difficulty adjusting but just like with Facebook timeline, I’ll adjust to it.”
Other features, including the subscribe button, social sharing features and video related metadata have been moved below the video.
The carefully placed ‘Video playlists’ feature has been moved to the right of the video content and with good reason as it allows for more video content to run without the user being interrupted which YouTube hope will increase the length of time users spend on the site watching videos.
Previously much of the YouTube traffic has been driven by search but there has been a shift in the way YouTube engages with its audience and are now making a concerted effort to get viewers to view multiple related videos and keep eyes on the screen.
YouTube’s new design surpasses its predecessor which was created in 2005 to encourage users subscribe to more video channels in hopes it would increase engagement and returning visitors.
Since then, the number of users who subscribe to a video channel has almost trebled indicating that YouTube’s original plan did work.
Figures show that the number of YouTube users who are subscribing to more channels is on average 50 percent, and view time from those channels has grown 30 percent.
YouTube now has more than 800 million users worldwide, engaging with the site or via the YouTube app, every month who watch an astonishing 4 billion hours of videos during that time.
We’d love to know your thoughts on the new design. You can comment in the box below
