ESPN.com: The Worldwide Leader in Facelifts?

Yet another addition to the array of ESPN entities is ESPN 360, a free online service dedicated to providing users with behind-the-scenes access and special content that isn’t aired on ESPN. With all these additions, it’s easy to see why ESPN.com needed an update.

What greets the millions of visitors per day is an annoying pull down advertisement that pop-up blockers don’t catch – an ad that also prevents users from seeing the one large picture that accompanies the top story of the day. If you make the mistake of downloading ESPN Motion, an embedded video plays automatically, adding sound to the already confusing main page.

As with any Web site, usability, looks, speed, and accessibility to important information are four keys to a successful user visit. ESPN.com impressively succeeds in the speed department, or that may simply be APOGEE, my internet service provider.

As for looks, ESPN.com appears more jumbled than CNN Headline News television. The main stories are non-bolded links along the right third of the page, and the headlines give little indication to the content of the article unless the user is already familiar with the sports world. It is very difficult to focus long enough to read each headline because of all the advertisements surrounding the links.

Scrolling farther down, the user can see a slideshow of the "spotlighted" stories of the day. Long captions accompany the pictures just long enough for the user to not finish reading them. This is either a ploy by ESPN to get you to click on the article in order to finish reading the caption, or it is poor timing by a techie who can probably read faster than the average American.The farther the user scrolls, the less jam-packed the site gets.

Unfortunately, it becomes much more boring. Here, each category is isolated with its top three stories highlighted. Again, however, the links are plain with no emphasis or accompanying pictures. This does leave more room for advertisements, which consume the right third of the site all the way to the bottom. You can’t link to your favorite team’s info right away, but you can buy tickets and jerseys at will.

Anything anyone needs to know about the sports world can be found somewhere on ESPN.com. The main page is the only place to find fault with ESPN. Once you locate your sport of interest, the site becomes much more usable. Information is consolidated and easier to read since advertisements and flashing pictures don’t interrupt the user.

Overall, ESPN is still the best place on the net to get sports information. The upgrades work well once the user is able to find his specific sport’s page. What ESPN needs to do is focus more on content and accessibility to the major sports stories instead of cluttering its homepage with advertisements and ways to get users to buy things. If this goal is accomplished, ESPN.com will be the easiest and most accessible sports site on the web.