Netflix Site Redesign: What Do You Like or Dislike?

Netflix launched a new site design today that eliminated the tan-colored tabs and replaced them with dark and light gray boxes. The site seems to have a cleaner and less busy feel, especially on pages like New Arrivals and Taste Preferences. 

Anthony noticed some changes to the way Netflix handles metadata: "I have worked a lot with metadata and was interested in the recent job postings Netflix had for metadata people. I tend to watch their tags and drilled-down listing data pretty closely. If you look at the Television discs/content you will notice that network information has mostly been stripped out now, so CBS shows will no longer carry the CBS tag, etc....  I have only seen distribution company tags... i.e. Warner Home Video... recently. One of the major differences you will notice right away is no more "BBC" only "British TV." This kind of reorg is long overdue in my opinion as their data was getting pretty sloppy. It was obvious that a single protocol wasn't followed from the beginning.   Hopefully going forward they will be consistent with their entries."

The new $7.99 per month streaming-only plan is even more streamlined without the Browse DVD section (it feels weird not to have a DVD queue).

What do you think of the redesign?

Thanks to Anthony, Mike, and Noor for sending this in.

Comments

[Bryan Bortz]

The beige/tan color started looking dated and bad years ago.

[Chuck]

I liked the "Yellow Jacket" (yellow and black) that they use to have. I also missed the "It's in the mail button).

[Anthony Hayes]

I feel torn. I was so used to the old design that I miss it, but it was time for something new. At first I didn't like how basic the grey boxes were, but it's starting to grow on me.

Not having a DVD queue would be weird. It's also exciting... like we're seeing a glimpse of the post-disc based media world. I like it!

[joe]

i dont like the gray. looks cheap.

[Perkins Cobb]

They've also added a "created by" field for TV shows, which makes a lot more sense, since people will recognize names like Joss Whedon or David E. Kelley more than mostly anonymous episodic directors.

[TigerT]

Not really that much of a change. What I'd really like is for the Queues to feature thumbnails of the dvd covers-especially the Watch Instant queue, so that those of us gluttons who've overstuffed ours can get a better feel for what some of the titles are-meaning motivation to watch or sample things we've never seen before.

[Matt]

I would still like the opportunity to add queues, so I could separate the titles into genres.

[Gran]

@Matt - Use profiles. You can then use your profiles for different genres

[JohnnyBob]

It's cosmetic only, as far as I've noticed so far.

I still hate the roll-over pop-ups which try to guess my preferences. I only want to see the overall user average rating.

[Ivan]

are mutiple profiles possible with Streaming Only plan? I was hoping to move to a Streaming Only plan for a few months, then move to a DVD plan for a few months to catch up on titles not available for streaming...and then go back and forth between the two plans. I would hate to have to recreate my DVD queue everytime.

[dAVe]

I'm not sure why NetFlix needs to maintain a website anymore except for access to signup/setup/change the "My Account" information (aka the cash register.) I'm pretty sure they only want me to use their service from my PS3/Wii/Roku devices. Streaming, baby! It's the fu-ture.

[Ian]

They need a website because searching isn't currently supported by some players (like my bluray player...get with it you guys!).

[Matt]

It's bad, it's broken in Chrome. The "Add to Instant" & "Play" buttons are not aligning correctly underneath the thumbnails.

[Scott]

It looks like they rolled out additional changes today. Styles and popup functionality are changed and very much broken on IE 8 and Chrome 9, but work on Firefox 3.6 (all on XP).

[ncmacasl]

They are tweaking it more and more - most page decriptions are not working any mote - must be doing LIVE changes!!

[Tim]

The site is hit and miss for me. I mostly use the queue to manage the order of my moves. I also use the individual movie page to read reviews. Using the site to browse or search is frustrating.

[jeff]

It's broken in Opera. From the pics, it looks about the same as the last redesign, which is still far worse than the design (and community features) they ditched about a year ago. Regardless, it's broken in my preferred browser, and that + the price increase + the community features going away a while back are making me re-evaluate my need to have netflix.

[Anthony Hayes]

Seems to be working great on Chrome and FFX for me. I remember the days when streaming would only work on IE unless you installed the plugin for FFX. Oh how times have changed. lol.

[J]

I definitely miss having Showtime and HBO shows listed separately. I have never paid for premium channels on TV, and separating their listings on NetFlix gave me a quick way to look for the TV shows that I know I have missed. Plus they generally have higher production values and can be edgier than regular TV. But now I guess I can't isolate them.

[J]

But then again, I don't think I have liked any of NetFlix' changes for several years. So I'm obviously not their target audience anymore. Oh well, life goes on.

[Jdrch]

Looks OK to me. Nothing special, but not disastrous either.

[Tim]

Designing a site compatible with all browsers is a nightmare, I've done it. You often have to 'hack' your code to 'fix' problems in browser rendering engines that display content differently.

That said, I think the change is welcome. It's not drastic, but I think it works.

[Matt]

It all seems to be fixed now. Designing a website that is compatible with all modern browsers is not hard at all, the problems usually come with certain versions of Internet Explorer.

[John Mc]

Honestly, if it weren't for the blog entry I'm not sure I'd have noticed the change...

[SouthPaw]

Why don't the move queue tabs to main tab bar.

[Wuzzy]

meh.

Content, not color, is the important part.

[JoeyBishop]

It looks like a UI from Windows 95. I'll trust the company's judgement though w/ this one...

[Abecooper]

What's happening with the British catalog? A bunch of streaming titles are expiring Dec. 1. I've been scared before like this, but we got a reprieve.

[Mark]

reading comments here and other forums just reminds me that no matter what NF does or does not do, you cant please everybody....If they tried to please everybody here on HNF the netflix website would be a disaster.

[Greg]

Why is there still an instant queue? It doesn't fit a model that is instant access on demand.

[Micki]

I want to do $7.99 per month streaming-only but I can't because of a lot of them with no English subtitle, I can't understand what they said and I don't have a pleasure from that movie. So I need to use DVDs not streaming movies. I am stuck, please help me & deaf people, please make sure they have a fun while they are watching movies with English subtitles. Please? Thank you.

[iphone sale]

Seems to be working great on Chrome and FFX for me. I remember the days when streaming would only work on IE unless you installed the plugin for FFX. Oh how times have changed. lol.
I'm agree with you!

[Kayla]

Why do many (perhaps all) BBC shows say "Available until 12/1/10" for Watch Instantly??? One of the biggest reasons I love Netflix is being able to stream BBC content that isn't as available in America! Why are shows like Doctor Who and Bleak House being removed from Watch Instantly? Is this a permanent change? I don't like it, to say the least.

[JD]

For those of us you live in BFE, don't stream anything much less movies, these changes make downloading data via dial-up tough!

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't appear that they will allow you to maintain a DVD queue if you have a streaming-only account. This could be a useful feature. A lot of the movies I would like to see are not available for streaming, so it would be helpful to be able to save several of them and temporarily switch to a DVD rental plan in order to watch them.