Back to the Drawing Board for Microsoft's MSN.com

TechFlash reports: Where's the new MSN.com?

Back in November, when Microsoft Corp. launched a preview of the portal's redesign, the company planned to test it among a small portion of users before launching it to everyone in January (i.e., this month). But the old-school homepage remains the default for most, and an MSN executive says the company is making a series of tweaks in the design after finding that users overall weren't clicking through to MSN features and preprogrammed Bing searches as much as in the past.

The overall click-through rate is "down a little bit," acknowledged Bob Visse, MSN general manager of product management, via phone this morning. However, he said, the company is pleased with the design overall, and the reason for rolling it out gradually was to collect this kind of data and make adjustments if necessary.

Microsoft now plans to roll out the new site broadly "early this year."

"The good news is that with the active customers, their repeat visits are up," Visse said, explaining that some loyal MSN users like the new design enough to switch to the preview on their own. "In a way, we’re willing to give up a little bit of the click-through rate if we can get customers who are much happier with the site and come back more often. From our standpoint, a long-term loyal customer who really loves the site is way more valuable than trying to eke out one more click."

MSN is critical for Microsoft's Bing search engine. It produces about half of Bing's overall queries through the search box at the top of MSN.com and features inside the site that lead to Bing search results. One change that the company is planning involves bringing the popular "Top People" and "Hot Topics" search module from the traditional MSN.com homepage over to the new design, Visse said.

Visse said the shortfall in search click-throughs on the new site has been relatively minor, within a percentage point of the results the company is seeing on the traditional MSN homepage. Although click-throughs overall are down, some features on the new site—such as the addition of a module for Facebook and other social-networking tools—have been particularly good at getting users engaged.

The new design seeks to streamline MSN.com, tucking many of the links currently visible at the top of the page into drop-down menus. It's not a surprise that the company has seen fewer clicks by visitors as a result, said Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft research firm.

"The benefits of a streamlined page are that you attract more readers in the long run," Rosoff said. "Readers are more likely to return. But it reduces the number of links on the page, so you’re probably going to reduce click-throughs."

The company has also heard from readers that there's not enough contrast in the text and overall colors of the new design, Visse said, and it's looking into ways of addressing those concerns, as well.