SAN FRANCISCO – Yahoo is renovating the main entry into its website in an effort to get people to visit more frequently and stay longer.
The long-awaited makeover of Yahoo.com’s home page is the most notable change to the website since the Internet company hired Marissa Mayer as its CEO seven months ago. The new look debuted Wednesday in the United States.
It’s the first time Yahoo has redesigned the page in four years. Mayer, who spent 13 years helping to build Google into the Internet’s most powerful company, has vowed to revive Yahoo Inc.’s revenue growth by establishing more of the company’s services as daily habits that “delight and inspire” their users.
Yahoo.com’s revamped home page figures to play a key role in determining whether Mayer, 37, realizes her ambition.
“We think this will be the new foundation for Yahoo,” said Mike Kerns, the company’s vice president of product.
Yahoo’s home page has remained one of the Internet’s top destinations. The page attracted 392 million worldwide visitors last month, a 7 percent increase from 365 million at the same time last year, according to research firm comScore Inc. By comparison, Microsoft Corp.’s msn.com drew a crowd of 334 million, up 4 percent from last year.
But visitors haven’t been spending as much time at Yahoo.com when they check in. They also haven’t been making as many return visits each month.
Yahoo’s revamped home page isn’t a radical new look, but there are enough changes that could make the website more addictive. In a blog post, Mayer wrote that she is trying to infuse Yahoo’s home page with a “more modern experience.”
The biggest switch will be in how Yahoo determines which stories to show each visitor on the home page and how the information is displayed.
Kerns says Yahoo has developed more sophisticated formulas to determine which topics are most likely to appeal to different people so the news feed can be fine-tuned to cater to different tastes.
Yahoo, which is based in Sunnyvale, Calif., already knows a lot about people who have been coming to its website for years, particularly if they logged in while visiting. People willing to connect Yahoo with their social circles on Facebook also are more apt to see stories that appeal to them. That access will enable Yahoo to pick out stories about subjects tied to a person’s interests on Facebook, either directly or through their online friendships. More tools will empower users to designate their areas of interest, too.
The news feed also has been retooled so it is constantly refreshed with more material as a person scrolls down the page. The right side of the new home page will be devoted to a stack of capsules that Yahoo calls “utilities.”
The capsules are devoted to weather, finance, sports, friends’ birthdays, video clips and Yahoo’s Flickr site for photos. The left side of the page will list various Yahoo services, although slightly fewer than in the old setup.
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