Sunday, July 17, 2016

Yahoo Finance redesign getting terrible reviews, called ‘New Coke of the Internet’

Final bids for Yahoo’s core businesses reportedly are due Monday. Verizon and AT&T are among those in the running. But whoever buys Yahoo needs to keep what’s working and fix what’s broken in the web portal’s core operations.
That includes Yahoo Finance.
Last week Yahoo Finance overhauled the site and the results aren’t pretty. A Yahoo article touting the changes has garnered more than 1,000 comments, almost all negative. (The few positive comments are likely by trolls trying to elicit angry responses.)
Yahoo Finance has been a workhorse for investors and others who closely follow publicly traded companies. The changes have many longtime users talking about switching to other websites.
Changes to the Yahoo Finance ticker pages have made the service practically unusable for me. Now, instead of a neat list of up-to-the-minute company-related articles under a stock data table, we’re presented with an airy page of random articles interspersed with cheap-looking sponsored content.
What used to be an easy-to-scan summary of news articles about a company has become a hard-to-navigate mess of content.
What’s worse, when you click on an article now, it takes you to a summary page for that article. If you want to see the full article, you have to click a second button.
Obviously Yahoo is trying to drive page views at the expense of usability and customer satisfaction. It’s as if Yahoo wants to drive me to MarketWatch or some other financial news website.
I sense that Yahoo is making these changes for financial and cosmetic reasons, not to improve the service.
For now, at least, Yahoo hasn’t messed with its Yahoo Finance portfolio pages. Fingers crossed.

Here are some sample comments from users about the new Yahoo Finance:
“You have succeeded in making the site nearly unusable. I gather that you never bothered to ask your users how they were using the site. This isn’t an improvement, it is a disaster.” – John Bollinger, CFA, CMT

“I’ve used Yahoo Finance since 1996; the year I learned to use the internet and have never used any other site … this is a complete joke and it’s a sad day as I have made my decision to leave Yahoo after 20 years of what I thought was a very successful relationship.” – AR

“I’ve used Yahoo Finance since 1998. Hands down, it has been the best, for almost 2 decades … This latest change however, this ‘new format’ as you call it, is completely unusable.” – WaveR

“I dislike everything about this new finance site that fills up my entire screen with information of no value for me ... Thanks for screwing up a terrific finance site.” – Richard

“This will be relegated as an example in the Introduction to Marketing class as the NEW COKE of the Internet.” – God

“This will not do. People using finance tools need instant results … The linear setup Yahoo Finance had was great. The present site is a clustered mess. The home page is a bloated cow.” – Dan

“Please give us the choice of which format to use. I much prefer the older format. I have already looked elsewhere for financial info due to the cumbersome nature of the new format.” – A Yahoo reader

“I have been a Yahoo Finance user for decades and cannot begin to express my extreme disappointment in your recent makeover of this site. The financial information from the discarded site was simple to access and easily navigated. The ‘improved’ Yahoo Finance is a joke … Please listen to us, your loyal users for decades, and scrap this new finance page and bring back what was the absolute, hands down best finance site on the internet. I cannot and will not use your new, ‘improved’ finance page and will look for another source of financial information.” – Glatt

“I have switched to MarketWatch. I did not switch because I love MarketWatch, I don’t, but Yahoo Finance has totally abandoned those of us who appreciated a concise website for company stock prices, financial and historical information, and relevant news. I have been with Yahoo Finance for over two decades, and this feels like a break up with a good friend who wanted to hook up with some pretty face, but no brains. Maybe next time the ‘engineers’ will actually talk to real users, instead of other engineers who say ‘Hey bro, that looks cool.’” – SS

“New and improved, are you kidding us all. It may look more ‘jazzy’ and ‘trending’ but not much emphasis was put into what the users want.” – David

“THIS IS A TOTAL FAILURE, everybody is looking for a different site. Whoever was in charge of this is clueless about what the stock market is. This site is used by adults, not silly kids. I hope soon you have no users at all.” – The Verdugos

“After 25+ years of using Yahoo to EASILY get access to and download data, I'll have to try one or more other places to replace what has been lost by the changes you have introduced.” – Charlie

“What an incredibly misguided move. There is nothing positive that I can say about your new/improved setup. For years, Yahoo Finance has been an excellent resource. Whoever designed this schmozzle needs to be shown the door at the same time as the site is returned to its former, usable self.” – Brian

“Yahoo Finance was the only last part of Yahoo that was any good. Now that is gone! I will go somewhere else for my financial data.” – Meohmy 
There are many more similar comments.

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