Running Calendar Update November 12th 2010

Posted November 12th, 2010 in Case Studies

I've been working on some changes to my New Zealand Running Calendar website over the last few days and just made the changes go live tonight. The running calendar lists running events in New Zealand and has a search function; I moved the search function from the left side to the top under the main navigation to free up horizontal space in the main content area.

Old version

The screenshot below shows the older version. The layout was 990px wide. The search form was on the left side and ads on the right side with the main content area in the middle. The navigation in the banner/header area had the social networking/subscribe icons on the right.

New version

The new version moves the search function to the top navigation area which frees up space on the left side and now means there are just two columns: the main content area and the ads on the right. Funnily enough, there was so much room for the content I was able to drop the overall width to 960px.

The search function is now part of the top navigation area and the social networking/subscribe functions are now part of the advertising column on the right.

Reason for the change

I got the running calendar going with the original layout a few months ago but then came to realise there wasn't really enough space to show the information in the main calendar area. I had it set up with ellipsis when the content was too long but far too many events were too wide to fit in the space.

There was also too much white space as the user scrolled down the page so I decided to change to a two column layout with a wider content area and the search function at the top.

I like the new layout a lot more and hopefully my users will think so too!