Last week, we shared the almost-final redesign of Hubs on the blog and in the forums. We gathered feedback, mostly centered around an aversion to showing Hub views and the wordiness of the last published/updated line, and performance information. Traffic data showed that, despite losing the sidebar ad, overall ad clickthrough has not changed, while clicks on related Hubs and overall consumption of Hubs per visitor has ticked up.
So, we’ve made a few changes to the design from last week which we’ve incorporated into the live Hubs using this template, and rolled this design out sitewide. Here’s a recap:
- The breadcrumb now displays the total number of published Hubs in each of the categories, to demonstrate the wealth of coverage in each of those areas.
- The author attribution has been moved to the right, has added a profile picture, and number of followers.
- We concisely relate when a Hub was first published, as well as when it was updated. (We’ve removed the number of Hub views)
- In the floating share box to the right, we mention that over 50 million visits that the site as a whole enjoys monthly. The popularity of HubPages is one that tends to impress readers and conveys authority.
- (We’ve removed the line that repeats the published/last updated dates and the Hub views).
- We’ve reintroduced the “previous” and “next” Hubs in a Group, along with a thumbnail of the first picture, to encourage readers to read more in a series.
- Related Hubs have a similar graphical treatment, with photo thumbnails. (We’ve removed the number of Hub views each has enjoyed, though)
- Comments reintroduce commenter levels and a photo of the commenter if s/he’s a Hubber.
- We’ve introduced a second ad in the footer, raising the number of ads from 4 to 5 in this design.
We hope your Hubs’ readers enjoy the new layout!
HubPages Blog 
Ahhhhhhh. All that hard work you have done has certainly paid off! This new layout is simply “lover-ly.” I like the fact that you included an avatar next to the author’s name and dropped the number of Hub views, so thanks for listening to our suggestions and carrying them out in your final design plans.
Just browsing through the new look and feel of the sight. So far it greatly improves the fluid mobility of my larger more intensive hubs. Am glad for the changes. Bravo and thumbs up. Keep on Hubbing Blake4d
It looks great! Thanks for all of your hard work.
Very nice! Do we still have links for posting to Stumble Upon, Tumblr, Google + , etc?
I didn’t see them but I could easily be overlooking them!
Kris – We removed them. Active users of those social sharing services typically share using a browser button or something like that. We have retained Facebook and Twitter, by far the most popular sharing vehicles among readers. – Jason
It’s nice but I still miss the hub score beside the title. I hope you could still show it. 😀
The new formatting is not that bad, except it does not seem to allow for either sidebar ads, or ads at the bottom of our hub, at least I cannot see any advertisements attached to my hubs. This seems to put a limit or a cap on possible earnings as we I believe earn from readers clicking on the advertising inserted into each hub published.
If possible maybe we can go back to the older formatting style.
I like how the new Hubpages are lined up. It is very neat and orderly. I don’t mind the number of times an article is read being removed from the Hubpage. If we want to know that we can check out accounts page.
The new Hubpages look very professional. Thumbs up!
newformat very cold and unpersonal
I do not see any tags in the new layout. Are tags no longer to be used? If they are used, how can they be changed after the hub is published?
Deidre/MsDee: Yes, they’re still there and used for choosing related Hubs, but they are not visible. If you’d like to change your tags, you should go into edit mode first.
Wonderful, EXCEPT for the up/down arrows that give no description as to what they’re for. I honestly believe that people are clicking the down arrow in the belief that doing so will give more options (useful, awesome, interesting, etc.) I FACT, however, it’s rating my articles down. 😦
Faceless39: We’ve recently changed these to thumbs up and thumbs down icons that appear side by side. 🙂
Thanks for all the hard work, and you have some positive comments.
But if we are all being honest, my feelings are that there is something missing. For example this hub/blog leaves me cold, all I have is a white background and a hub and this page only just covers half of the screne. For me it seems very empty as though it is only half finished. On some of the hubs I’ve read in the new format the profile photo is way to small.
I accept that we must move forward and that things change, also you aren’t going to please everyone all the time and that I must live with these changes.
Thanks for explaining the new format.
LOL Ghaelach
This is way cool! You’ve bumped the entire site into a more modern, usable and SEO-focused look and feel! Thanks for the guided tour. I’m amazed at the work that went into these changes!
Thanks for all of the thought and hard work that went into the new format. I am pretty new to Hubpages, so am just learning and going along with it all. It looks nice to me.
The comment boxes seem to have an issue, though. As I type, the text bounces up and down and it’s hard to continue to type. I have to first create my response comment in Word, then copy it to the comment box because of this. I hope you will look into this to see if anyone else is having the issue. The day before the updates this was not a problem. Thank you.
Judah’s Daughter: Could you share this feedback in the “Report a Technical Problem” forum? That will help get the bug you’re experiencing resolved. Thank you!
I have question about how to use some of the features that were easily available before. How do we link to another persons article? Is there still easy access to stumble? I am most concered with the sharing features and how they now can be used?
Angela – Those who regularly use services like Stumbleupon tend to use browser buttons and other features that enable them to be shared with those communities. We have buttons for Facebook, Twitter and (if not opted out) Pinterest, since these are, by far, the largest sources of social traffic to HubPages.
Yes! I noticed the thumbs up / thumbs down buttons, and their tool tips this morning. BRAVO!! I now have absolutely zero complaints. I love the new look!!! Keep up the great work, HP.
It’s OK but can we have the option to go back to the original format? If not, you’ll get a lot of negative attention when you won’t at least make it an option. Hopefully I’ll get used to it, but please notify people a bit better when there’s going to be some change and Hubbers are just expected to stand and watch.
I love the new design. It looks modern and more professional. It also has an upscale look. Excellent job of continuing to improve the site for viewers and for hubbers. Thanks for all the work! VirginiaLynne
Certainly a nice interface. I think the hub gets more attention this way. Voting is easy with the thumbs up or down. It is a little difficult to see profile pictures but I guess those aren’t absolutely necessary.
I’m sure a lot of work went into this face lift and it appears to be a job well done.
Re. No.4:
Bendo13 wrote in the “New Hub layout live sitewide!” forum thread on HubPages, permalink: http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/99203?page=8#post2123734
that according to Quantcast, and I quote:
“If you look at Quantcast, 394,089 people came to this site on Saturday, a couple days after the new layout was put into play. So, we’re still slowly heading downward BUT that’s a huge drop from last Saturday, when 426,835 people stopped by the site.”
How do Bendo’s figures tie up with HP’s claim in the new sidebar that 50 million people “discover” HubPages every month?
Even at 500,000 views per day, times that by 30 makes 15 million people per month.
Please explain how the 50 million figure is arrived at.
Sue/Juliette: We use our Google Analytics figures which show 50 million visits a month.
It’s good to see a company actually dedicated to helping their end users navigate their website. Facebook should take notice.
This new layout is messing up my Adsense earnings big time. If the layout doesn’t change back to what it was before, I’ll be left with no other choice but to build my own site using the layout that I know was working for me, which I’m just strongly considering doing since I doubt my comment will be enough to get you all to change back to the old layout. My profession is in web design so not a big deal. Just thought I’d let you know that if all of a sudden one day you see me gone, you know why. If I’m not making any money on Hubpages like I used to all due to this new layout change, then what’s the point of having an account at Hubpages?
Hi Mitchell,
We chose this design because, after weeks of testing, we found it helped most Hubbers get more ad earnings. There may be something else effecting your Hubs- sometimes traffic fluctuates for seemingly no reason, and quite often it bounces back, so don’t give up hope! You still have control over the layout of all your Hubs- all we have changed is some small design details and the orientation of related Hubs and ads around it. 🙂