Denton: Gawker redesign aimed at casual readers, not fanatics

Ad Age
Nick Denton said at Ad Age’s Media Evolved conference that in moving away from a reverse-chronology layout for Gawker Media sites, he decided to put the needs of occasional visitors over the minority of regular readers. The limitations of the old design were evident when Gizmodo got its hands on an iPhone 4 prototype in 2010, writes Cotton Delo. “The story drew massive traffic due to the publicity, but because of the old design, the editors had to stop updating the site for eight hours one day, since the story people were looking for would have dropped too low on the page to be found in the old format.” Scoops like the iPhone one helped triple traffic, said Denton, who also told the audience that Gawker plans to release a product to encourage smart people to comment. || Earlier: Nick Denton loses bet over Gawker’s page views after redesign