The news was broke yesterday by @the_hinduthat they’ve got a redesign and is available at Beta.TheHindu.com A lot of us, didn’t wait for another moment and rushed to the place, and were welcomed with a stunningly fresh design, that’s truly global and totally awesome. Every single aspect of the real web designing is beautifully implemented. See for yourself!

The all new homepage
(full size screenshot opens on click)

The X Factors

• The only Indian news web site with a usable User Interface (UI) and a great User Experience (UX)
• Very smooth on eyes. Great readability
• Sensible AD placements
• They’ve got the AD thing right. No fiddling around hurting the content. ADs are placed in such a way that the UX isn’t damaged. It never gets in the way of reading.
  Also note that, there is NO AD at all on the single post page (except the sidebar ADs). That’s a bold move, Hats off.
• They haven’t broken any news item into multiple pages (as many corporate websites do, so as to increase the Page Views). Everything ends in a single page.
• Slideshows – What’s more notable than the beautiful slideshows are the way they’re done. The slideshow plays in a single page with smooth transitions. Again, this is a bold move as many of the corporate websites, as mentioned above, uses slide shows as a method to exponentially increase their page views by putting each slide in a separate page.
• Social sharing options. Recent posts widget. Most Popular/Most commented widgets. Related topics and news along side every post.
• …yes, there is so much to talk about.

Why does all these matter ?

Because this could be seen as the start of some sort of a trend among Indian web sites, where the users aren’t under-rated and factors like User Experience and User Engagement are given the importance they deserve.Designing quality designs require truck loads of inspiration and these awesome designs will go a long way in that direction.

We’ve got ClearTrip as a great example for sensible web design, and now we have The Hindu. The list is all set to roll down, and it’ll be just a matter of time – Indian web sites going the real web way (including those of the Govt. of India).

Note that the new design of The Hindu is in beta and the whole thing is in the redesign phase. They’re in the process of porting their archives to their new design, which understandably, takes much time. The wait will make it sweeter, if not sweetest.

(BTW, if you’ve got some great Indian web sites with awesome design as those mentioned here, tell everyone of them in the comments. Let the trend catch up.)