Hi, I’m Nick Haley and I’m the Director of User Experience here at the Guardian. As Anthony mentioned in his previous post, we’re currently testing a new version of our site with a small percentage of our audience. For those who have used the site we’re also looking for feedback so you can let us know your views.

I’m pleased to say that over 5,000 of you have been in touch using our feedback form which is fantastic. We’ve read every single entry and really appreciate the time you’ve taken to share your thoughts. The purpose of this blogpost is to be open about the themes we are seeing in the feedback so far, both positive and negative, and to talk about how we intend to take that feedback on board and improve the site.

We wanted to keep our feedback form simple so providing feedback was quick and easy for you. So what have you been saying? Well, on the question of “What has been your experience of using the Guardian Beta website so far?”, we’re seeing an even split between people who immediately say they prefer the new site versus those who said they prefer the current site.

We’re encouraged by this as we know that switching from a site you’re very familiar with can be a disorientating experience. However, we also know there’s lots more to do before our new site can be considered successful.

In terms of positive feedback a lot of you have said that you find the site to be clean, clear, modern, simple and easy to read which is great as that’s exactly what we’re trying to achieve. Many of you have also mentioned that the new site is a lot faster than the existing site which the team are pleased about because we’ve really focused on performance with our responsive redesign.

Based on the less positive feedback, I want to share with you the top five issues. Our challenge here is to address the concerns raised, whilst still maintaining all the positive things readers like about the site so far.

1. The density of information on the homepage is lower than the existing desktop site

This is a consistent theme from our desktop users and one we are focused on improving. We’ve heard you say things like you can’t scan items quickly with the new site and that there is less of a comprehensive overview, especially on the homepage. Also there is a lack of an “at a glance” view of the news and more scrolling is needed to see same amount of headlines on the homepage. We’ve also received feedback that the current limited number of choices on desktop, combined with low density of presentation, leads to a fear of missing out on valued Guardian content.

What are we planning to do to address this?

Density is a key challenge for us with a responsive redesign, and is a challenge which many responsive news sites are facing. We’ve built the site in a way that allows us to experiment quickly to find the optimum solution, rearranging page elements until they work in the best way possible. We’ve already begun running a test where we show more news content on the page in a more compact way. We’re also looking, especially in the news section, at how we can make better use of the space, especially for those of you viewing the site on a desktop or laptop. We’ll measure the effectiveness of these changes by using data analysis and also by speaking to our users in our own ux lab, as well as here on the site.

2. Navigation to content is much harder on the new site

When we first launched the beta site we knew we hadn’t fully built our responsive navigation and this is definitely causing you problems. A lot of your feedback has been that the lack of subsections appearing in the navigation is affecting findability of content. It’s very hard to find secondary level sections like education, US news, food etc without using search (which I’ll come onto). This is compounded by fact the section pages are simple lists right now as we initially focus our attention on the homepage and our article pages.

What are we planning to do to address this?

Well we’ve already added all the secondary sections to the navigation, as you can see here on our money page. We’ve also added pagination to our sub-sections so you can step back through our content. The next steps are to replace the existing navigation bar with a new enhanced responsive design, whilst also looking at how we increase the amount of content on our section pages through adding additional elements to the page.

3. The comment functionality is poor for those who engage heavily in comments

One of the great strengths of the Guardian site is our commenting community and we know we have more work to do around the experience of both reading and responding to comments. Many of you dislike the fact that in order to view all the comments on an article you need to click the “show comments” button multiple times. We definitely agree that this is considerably more time consuming than the current site. This is compounded by the fact that there is no comment history on profile pages meaning those of you that comment are unable to see replies to comments you have made.

What are we planning to do to address this?

We’re looking at ways to make it easier to access full comment threads on an article, as well as adding comment history to profile pages.

4. The font size on articles is too large

I must admit to being a bit surprised when I first read negative comments around font size, however after doing some digging into the feedback I now feel I understand the problem. It’s not necessarily that the font itself is too big, but the effect the size of the font has on the ease in which an article can be read. There is a perception that there is now too much scrolling needed to read an article compared to the old site and this increased effort needed to read an article is frustrating.

What are we planning to do to address this?

My colleague Alex has spoken more about our use of typography in a separate post so I will leave it to him to reply in depth. However font sizes are definitely something we are experimenting with right now while we optimise the reading experience across different devices.

5. Search is poor

One of the knock-on effects of not having all our navigation options visible is we’ve forced readers to use search to find the content they are looking for. The issue you’ve struggled with is the search function isn’t easy enough to find on the site and also the presentation of results is poor.

What are we planning to do to address this?

At this stage of the project our search solution is still optimised for mobile devices rather than being truly responsive and working across mobile, tablet and desktop. As part of the implementation of our new header, we will address these issues with search.

Another piece of feedback which has been quite common is the feeling that the site has only been designed for tablets and mobiles. I want to reassure you that isn’t the case. As we’ve stated in previous blog posts our approach to this project has been to start with mobile and scale up, and it is our intention to build a quality experience irrespective of which device or computer you use to access our site.

I’d like to thank everyone who has taken the time to send us feedback. We really appreciate all your constructive comments, both positive and negative. It’s only through listening to our users that we’ll make a truly successful site and part of the responsibility of my team is to take all the feedback we receive and turn it into actionable insights.

As has been previously stated, the site is still very much in beta and we’ve only focused on the homepage and article pages so far. There is lots more to come, but please feel free to leave any comments you have below.