Freeserve And Alta Vista Cut Back On Pop-Ups
Freeserve and AltaVista have redesigned their home pages and have reduced the number of pop-up ads on their sites in a bid to increase usage.
The layout of Freeserve’s site has been changed to contain more visible information and similar content has been grouped together to improve usability. Freeserve has also opted to remove pop-up ads from its shopping and e-commerce forum, replacing them with more streamlined text-based formats.
Jon Gisby, managing director of the Freeserve portal, commented: “As internet usage grows and existing users needs become more sophisticated, we have to innovate to stay ahead. By regularly carrying out usability testing and canvassing customers’ views we aim to continually improve the overall user experience.”
AltaVista has also revamped its UK search engine with a range of new features, it also claims to have searched through over five billion sites and weeded out duplicate pages, links which no longer work and spam ads.
Pop-up ads have been a bone of contention in internet advertising for some time, with portals attempting to balance the needs of advertisers with the usability of their sites. In an attempt maintain this balance AltaVista is employing ‘tracer’ technology, which allows advertisers to target a specific audience or individual user with less intrusive banner ads.
Eric Woods, research director of Ovum Holway, which advised AltaVista, commented: “The goal for web search suppliers is to evolve search from a tool of last resort to an intelligent guide to the networked world. Search vendors that can establish themselves in this role will have a valuable position within the new economy – in terms of their relationship to users and to other service suppliers.”
AltaVista: 020 7025 5000 www.altavista.com Freeserve: 0845 070 0066 www.freeserve.co.uk
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