24/7 TV news websites: Part 13 - Global navigation and classification

 by Martin Belam, 28 January 2008

I've been doing a series of articles looking at the websites of some of Europe's leading 24/7 English language TV news channels. This week I wanted to concentrate on some of the ways that the sites handle navigation issues.

Assorted navigation elements

For a start we should note that all of the sites use nearly exactly the same type of global navigation structures. Links to stories are grouped into clusters by either the geographical locations of stories (e.g. UK, Middle East), or by the broad topic of a story (e.g. Entertainment, Sports).

None of the sites, though, seemed to use 'time' as a primary navigational device e.g. stories from today, stories from yesterday - an example of this type of navigation is The Independent's "Day in a page" feature.

I identified 10 distinct groupings of links, and mapped each link in the primary navigation of each site to one of these:

  • Content type e.g. blogs, pictures
  • Corporate information
  • Distribution medium or information
  • Editorial comment
  • Geographical region
  • Help and Support with using the site
  • Language
  • Specific Programme
  • Topic
  • User-generated content

I wanted to examine several of these groupings in more detail

Geographical region

The majority of the sites, to a lesser or greater extent, used geographical region as a way of grouping stories. The BBC site even has a mini-map of the globe as part of their international edition left-hand navigation.

BBC navigation globe

The exception was Russia Today which did not use this format, and Euronews, who only used 'Europa' as a way of gathering together EU related stories. ITN and Sky News rather crudely divided the news agenda into UK or World. Al Jazeera, the BBC, CNN and France 24 used a wider range of geographical locations, but not all regions are equal in coverage. Notably CNN covered the US, whereas the others cover 'the Americas', and Africa was under-represented. The BBC and Al Jazeera split the Asian continent into two sections.

Navigation by geographical region
  AlJazeera logo BBC Newslogo CNN logo Euronews logo France 24 logo ITN logo Russia Today logo Sky News logo
Africa Yes Yes No No Yes No No No
Americas Yes Yes No No Yes No No No
Asia No No Yes No No No No No
Asia: Central & South Asia Yes Yes No No No No No No
Asia: Pacific Yes Yes No No Yes No No No
Europe Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No
France No No No No Yes No No No
Middle East Yes Yes No No Yes No No No
UK No Yes No No No Yes No Yes
US No No Yes No No No No No
World No No Yes No Yes Yes No Yes

Topic

I identified 22 topic labels across the 8 sites. Of these, 9 were unique to a specific site. The most popular topic was Business, which appeared in the primary navigation on all 8 sites (labeled as 'Economia' on Euronews and 'Money' on ITN).

Business links

The next most popular, appearing on 7 and 6 sites each respectively, were 'Weather' and 'Sport'. It should be noted here that the BBC lists these as 'Related sites' in their left-hand navigation, rather than in amongst the rest of the topics I identified.

Related BBC site navigation

4 sites listed 'Science' as a top-level topic, and 4 sites listed 'Technology'. Although I believe that on most sites these two labels essentially represented the same topic area, I have broken these into two categories since two sites (BBC and Euronews) list both Science and Technology in their main navigation.

Entertainment or Showbiz news features on 4 sites, with Euronews and France 24 having rather more high-brow 'Culture' sections. The fascination with promoting odd-ball stories as a destination in themselves seems a peculiarly British habit, with the BBC, ITN and Sky offering 'Also in the news', 'And finally...' and 'Strange news' respectively.

Navigation by topic
  AlJazeera logo BBC Newslogo CNN logo Euronews logo France 24 logo ITN logo Russia Today logo Sky News logo
Business Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Weather Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Sport Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes No
Entertainment No Yes Yes No No Yes Yes No
Science No Yes No Yes Yes No Yes No
Technology No Yes Yes Yes No No No Yes
"And finally..." No Yes No No No Yes No Yes
News No No No Yes No Yes Yes No
Culture No No No Yes Yes No No No
Health No Yes No No No No No Yes
Media No No No No Yes No No Yes

The nine unique top level topics were:

  • Cinema, Fly, Futuris and Musica on Euronews
  • People on France 24
  • Election 2007/8 on Russia Today
  • Market Data, Money and Politics on Sky News

Content type and User-generated content

Another common way of grouping items on the news site was by content type. This could be further divided between content produced by the site, and user-generated content.

Of the content types, the most popular included a single repositry of in-depth or special reports, blogs, and travel/traffic news. Links to interviews, pictures and video also appeared in the primary navigation of some sites.

Navigation by content type
  AlJazeera logo BBC Newslogo CNN logo Euronews logo France 24 logo ITN logo Russia Today logo Sky News logo
Special Reports Yes Yes No No Yes No Yes No
Blogs No No Yes No Yes No No Yes
Schedule No No Yes No Yes No Yes No
Travel No No Yes No Yes No No Yes
Video and Audio No Yes Yes No No No No Yes
Guests No No No Yes No No Yes No
In Pictures No Yes No No No No No Yes
Live TV No No No Yes No No No Yes

Several of the sites also had primary navigation links through to their user-generated content areas. The message board format was the most popular, which was included in the navigation of the Al Jazeera, BBC and Russia Today. Sky News had links to user-submitted photographs, and to the Sky News Panel. CNN have a link to their iReport initiative in their header navigation.

Corporate information

Traditionally on the web a lot of sites have buried their corporate information in 8pt type at the foot of a page. Some of the news sites I looked at had much more prominent links though. Sky, Russia Today and Al Jazeera have their 'About us' link in their main navigation. Sky, Russia Today and, this time, Euronews, also have a 'Contact us' link in their primary navigation.

Distribution medium or information

Several of the sites used their left-hand or top navigation sections to promote ways of obtaining their content beyond web pages. Here podcasts, mobile editions and RSS feeds were the most popular formats listed within the main navigation areas.

Navigation by content type
  AlJazeera logo BBC Newslogo CNN logo Euronews logo France 24 logo ITN logo Russia Today logo Sky News logo
Podcasts No No No Yes Yes No No Yes
RSS Feeds No Yes No No Yes No No Yes
Mobile No No Yes Yes Yes No No No

It was noticeable that amongst the three sites that seem to have most embraced download tools and desktop alerts - CNN, Sky and the BBC - Sky were very aggresive in promoting these tools in their left-hand navigation. CNN and the BBC tended to link to these features in promotional slots, rather than as part of their permanent navigation.

Alternative distribution links

Tomorrow, in the next part of this series of blog posts, I'll be looking specificially at how the 8 sites I've been looking at encourage users to move between stories with lateral and related navigation features.

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