River of automation content!

One of the leading American automation publications is Automation World. Because we on the Read-out Signpost have limited resources we use publications like theirs to keep up to date and often link to articles which we think our visitors will find useful. They have just updated their website and the following comments from their Digital Managing Editor, Grant Gerke gives the thinking behind this redesign.

"Like most successful electronic products, usability and design are paramount in ensuring an engaging user experience. For us, a good user experience pointed to a two-column design that runs throughout the site, offering solid readability for articles and allowing readers to find videos, news, white papers and sponsored links in the second column (aka “right rail”) running alongside the article.

"Our next design choice was to create a "river" of content in the main column for the navigation landing pages, affording readers the ability to sift through newly added content in an easy, streaming fashion, aided by large headlines and images. Each article, video or white paper in the river has a taxonomy category that helps readers identify specific automation strategies.

 

"The new navigation does away with numerous categories from the older site and simplifies the world of automation with five, major navigation buckets: Control; Operations; Information Management; Safety; Security and Energy. Sub-categories from these five disciplines are shown on the landing pages and allow a deeper dive into a particular discipline. 

 

"Along with a new navigation, the site employs a new taxonomy. Taxonomy terms provide a more granular experience within the site and each piece of content provides an opportunity to click on an automation strategy term, for example, “asset management,” or, an Industry term, such as Oil and Gas. On each page, look for multiple terms in the FILED IN section, click, and land on a page devoted to that topic."

Take a look at the site and see what you think!