Thestar.com is starting to really annoy me. It’s my go-to Toronto newspaper website, but I’m finding it increasingly difficult to continuously return day after day. There are two main reasons that I feel this way:
1) The design itself is in general hard on the eyes (my eyes atleast)
2) The advertising is becoming too “in your face”.
In terms of the design, in my opinion, nytimes.com is the benchmark for all newspapers from an ascetics and functionally perspective. latimes.com and wsj.com are good too. Thestar.com’s design is not even in the same league as these sites, but I see no reason why it couldn’t be.
As for the advertising, I know this heavily intrusive style can be found on many website these days (I’m talking mostly about the floating ads that cover up content). The problem is I just think it cheapens what I believe to be a pretty high quality product. The Star is a good paper in a big market; I don’t expect to see these types of ads here. And yes, trust me, I’m well aware that the newspaper industry (in its current form) is changing and everyone is trying to reinvent the way they make money. But still, I think thestar.com has to consider it’s brand here and the damage it may be causing.
My $0.02, take it for what it’s worth.
