SAN FRANCISCO — For years,
AOL has tried and largely failed to make its main Web site a bigger hit with Internet users. The number of visitors to the site has eroded, as has the company’s overall revenue.
AOL is trying once again to lift its fortunes by introducing a redesigned Web portal that gives a greater emphasis to news created by AOL’s staff and original video clips. The overhaul, which it began to roll out on Friday, is aimed at making the site a more interesting destination and to increase advertising.
“
AOL is still a very desirable place to advertise — very high household income, and more women than men,” said Tim Armstrong,
AOL’s chief executive.
AOL, which was spun off from Time Warner last year to become an independent company, is in the midst of a turnaround effort led by Mr. Armstrong. He is refocusing the company on content, and news in particular, by expanding its Patch local news service and through the recent acquisition of the influential technology blog TechCrunch.
The new design will add local news headlines for the first time and moves video near the top of the page. Clips will include a series called “You’ve Got” that gives anyone a platform for 45 seconds.
Only one display ad will appear on the home page, which until last year featured nearly a dozen ads. Mr. Armstrong cleaned up the page shortly after joining AOL last year, saying the clutter was ineffective.
The redesign, however, includes a new area for sponsored content. Hollywood studios, for instance, could pay to include a link to a celebrity interview and a movie trailer.
Mr. Armstrong is trying to reverse a slide that began when Time Warner acquired
AOL nearly a decade ago. The grandiose plans that Time Warner executives used to justify the marriage never materialized.
Mr. Armstrong, a former Google executive, emphasized that the company’s revival would take time. So far there has been little sign of progress.
Since January, the number of unique visitors to AOL’s home page has declined 27 percent, to 35.8 million, according to the market research company comScore. Revenue during the first half of this year is down 25 percent, to $1.24 billion, compared with the same period in 2009.
Mr. Armstrong blamed AOL’s shrinking dial-up Internet access business, which the company is allowing to fade out, for the declines. He also said that he had eliminated a number of distribution deals that lifted AOL’s traffic but made no financial sense.
Ross Sandler, an analyst with
RBC Capital Markets, was cautiously optimistic about the
AOL redesign. But he said that while it might increase the amount of time existing users spent on the site, it would most likely fail to attract new users.
“I don’t think there is much they can do to increase the audience based on redesigning their home page,” Mr. Sandler said. “Structural trends are moving against
AOL.”
The new
AOL design is the first overhaul of the home page since 2008, and is the first in what Mr. Armstrong called a series of small changes to come.
He said that the philosophy behind the page was to inform visitors while also entertaining them. The focus will shift during the day from being news-oriented in the morning to a focus on lifestyle in the afternoon.
“We are basically trying to make sure that our users are prepared for the day and that they don’t get caught with their pants off,” Mr. Armstrong said.