This is a real embarrassment … to see what the Taiwan News has done with their website! Though to be sure … someone in Taiwan is congratulating him or herself on a job well-done! I think there are few who agree with that assessment.
I couldn’t believe what I saw: it’s like the website went back to the 90’s and revamped itself as an offshoot of Geocities before its heyday! Weirdly flashing graphics, horrible music soundtracks, moving graphics that don’t move fluidly at all, … It’s like someone designed the website with … what was that Microsoft program for doing websites… Microsoft FrontPage 98 (version 3) or something similar.
That coupled with graphics and music that are reminiscent of those large multi-packs that you could buy to build your own website by the thousands… My heart aches for those who worked so hard to build the Newspaper into something value. The old website is still available on a different URL, but I’m loathe to promote it for fear of condoning the new site!
After the redesign of the TaipeiTimes (finally bringing that site forward about 5 years)… I couldn’t believe how backward Taiwan News was. But the worst thing is that the pages have NO SEO value at all: I doubt Google indexes those new formats for multimedia meaning that many future visitors will find the news about Taiwan from papers that are well indexed. I even tried clicking on old links in the forum here, but they no longer work either. I also have to say that even local government sites are becoming slicker… I just don’t know who designed a site like that …. or why?
In some ways, the China News/Taiwan News was at the front- redesigning itself several times over the years… but I think this will also highlight how the paper just ‘imploded’ without having a print edition, they have virtually no chance now of having any revenue that matters. And online advertising won’t pay much attention to a site with less and less traffic. Witness, Compete’s own stats for etaiwannews show traffic off 40% in the past year anyway … but in fairness, none of the Taiwan English newspapers are showing good traffic levels at all.
I guess the EtaiwanNews just happens to be at the front again… this time as a self-imploding news organization. Pity.