I conducted a quick piece of research on the BBC Home page as part of an event called BBC Connected. Did you know it’s the third most visited home page? Yet only a very small percent of visitors actually use it? As our research discovered, most people bypass the page completely, preferring to use the navigation bar or a direct url (usually saved as a bookmark). Here, we share our findings and a few of our design proposals to improve the user experience of the BBC Home page, in particular under-served audience(s).
How do you use the BBC website? Do you ever look at or click on items on the home page? Have you used it more or less since the last redesign? I’d love to hear about your experience. Share your story using the comment box below.
Research by Keepitusable.com
Lisa Marie Ortega 
Nice research, I liked the approach. I’m wondering how you’re going to really test that users are willing to sign in when they land. You mentioned in the focus group that people were told what the benefits are, are you going to give a blurb on the site letting them know?
One approach I found interesting is to let users make these choices from the start to get their customized bbc, and afterwards let them know ‘like your personalized homepage? sign up so it stays’… or something along those lines.
Thanks for sharing your work!
@mustefaj
Thanks Mustefa, I agree with your suggestion. Our approach was that the user didn’t need to be signed in to use the personalisation features, but the obvious benefit to them of signing in is that their choices would be saved for future visits and also across devices (becoming more important). So yes I think it would be important to let them play with the personalisation first and then suggest signing in as having lots of benefits. Tricky feature to implement as it will have resistance. Unfortunately I’m no longer involved in this project so we will have to wait and see which ideas they take forward and how they’re implemented.
It’d be so interesting to know why people do / don’t resist the conversion on a working prototype!
Will keep an eye out on the bbc to see what they end up with.