Long-time readers of Abnormal Returns have by now noticed that the site looks a lot different. We have received a number of comments in the meantime, mostly positive but some negative, about the changes. We just wanted to take a moment to discuss what we were trying to achieve with the re-design.
The site had not been refreshed in quite some time. So from my perspective simply giving the site a facelift and injecting some new life into was reason enough. However there were some very real goals I tried to achieve with the redesign.
- Design – the old design was tired. Enough said.
- Site speed – the previous site was slow to load. The new site loads more quickly.
- Mobile – a third of pageviews occur on mobile and the new site is designed to be responsive to the size of the screen.
- Save for later – readers can now save links to Instapaper or Pocket for later.
You may have noticed we have also changed the publishing schedule as well. In addition to the daily linkfests we are now publishing specialized linkfests throughout the work week. These include posts dedicated to quantitative research, startups/venture capital, personal finance, longform and podcasts. In addition the Saturday linkfest is now exclusively finance-free.
More changes are coming. We are going to experiment with some additional ad models in the very near future. We are also talking about rolling out some exclusive schwag for readers. The goal being to put Abnormal Returns on a more sustainable path. If you are interested in discussing ways of working together please feel free to reach out.
Thanks again to all of our readers, both new and old. Abnormal Returns has been around a long time and we hope to keep it going. That would impossible if not for a group of readers we would argue are the best on the financial web.
