Chris Hall and his team at IABC have unveiled a new-look website that has been in the works for some time. It’s a vast improvement over the old look, with clearer navigation, a tabbed approach to keeping a good quantity of information on the home page (updates, upcoming programs, and news releases), and a cleaner look. I do have a problem with the amount of homepage real estate given over to a welcome message (welcome messages on business websites are so 90’s) and a gratuitious stock photo that adds nothing to the page. But Hall didn’t come up with this on his own. IABC conducted some extensive research among its members, showing them several different designs and asking them to vote. While I voted for one that brought useful information farther up on the page and made better use of that precious homepage real estate, my opinion was in the minority.

The best improvement is in the navigation, with a common look-and-feel running through the site that makes it a lot easier to get around. Other improvements include better search and more direct access to member-only content. Congrats to Chris and everybody else at IABC involved in the effort.