ESPN.com To Ring In The New Year With Updated Site Design

By Eric Fisher, Staff Writer, SportsBusiness Journal

ESPN.com will unveil its new site design on January 5, 2009. The new site will feature a 16 x 9 widescreen orientation, a heightened emphasis on video content and a more streamlined overall structure. While ESPN.com typically ranks among the very top sports sites each month in third-party traffic reports, the site by many opinions still has not achieved an optimal structure for content discovery and navigation. "There's going to be a much cleaner, more immersive experience, with a big focus on user-initiated video," said ESPN Exec VP/Multimedia Sales Eric Johnson. Some specific features, such as improved search functionality, have already been rolled out, while beta testing on the broader effort will continue through the fall. “This is an overall improvement that represents the next evolution of fan experience online,” said John Kosner, ESPN.com Senior VP & GM. “This will not be the end, but rather the start of a new era for us designed to greatly enhance the user experience. This is going to be a dramatic step forward.”