Homepage Redesign

The Challenge

The L.A. Times homepage relied on a series of individually constructed story modules, each built by hand every time a story needed to be added to the page. It was specialized, time-intensive work that created friction during breaking news situations when speed mattered most.

The design relied on larger images and a single-column layout in the main well, which pushed top stories into a deep scroll. Reader data showed most visitors never made it that far down the page.

The product team had conducted focus groups that confirmed what the data was already showing, but the proposed redesign would take months to reach market and the newsroom needed results sooner.

The Work

Working directly inside the CMS, the goal was to build working mockups that demonstrated a faster path forward, one that achieved the story density goals the focus groups had identified while avoiding the cost and timeline of a full rebuild. Those mockups became the basis for a close collaboration with the product team, where an understanding of existing newsroom workflows and pain points helped identify the specific efficiencies that needed to be built into the system.

The solution centered on moving story curation off the homepage itself and into a centrally managed list that editors could update independently. Stories added to that list would populate the homepage automatically, eliminating the need to build individual modules by hand. The approach relied entirely on a deeper understanding of what the platform was already capable of rather than new development or outside resources.

The Result

The redesign delivered a 10% increase in clickthrough rates and measurable improvement in scroll depth within the first month of launch. The new workflow also significantly reduced the time editors spent on manual homepage construction, freeing them to focus on editorial judgment rather than technical execution.

View the current L.A. Times homepage at latimes.com.