MarketWatch.com uses AJAX for Increased Personalization
MarketWatch.com, a subsidiary of the Dow Jones group, which provides business news, financial information and analytical tools, has launched of a significant homepage redesign. The streamlined homepage now offers readers the ability to personalize and quickly access recently viewed quotes and associated stories, save articles for later reading, and view a dynamic display of real-time headlines without having to refresh the page.
“The redesign is part of the overall MarketWatch effort to continually add valuable features, enhance users’ experience and increase their investment knowledge,” said Maria Molland, general manager, MarketWatch. “In addition, the main display advertisement on the page is more prominent, allowing advertisers to maximize their brand impact.”
The new site provides automatically updated news and quotes, showing real-time
headlines and MarketPulse Bullets, without readers having to refresh the
page. This feature, as well as Live Quotes that launched in October 2005,
utilizes AJAX technology to create a news-driven, dynamic experience for
investors. AJAX is basically a combination of existing web programming languages that allows web pages to behave more like a piece of software installed on a PC. In particular, it eliminates much of the egg-timer delays that occur while a page is being refreshed.
Increased personalization features on the site include:
- My Portfolio: readers can add a customized list of quotes and articles
to their homepage.
- My Stories: a new icon to the right of each headline allows readers to
quickly flag and save articles to their “My Stories” area for reading
later. This feature is now available on homepage articles and will be
expanded to articles across the site.
As readers interact with the stock quotes page, the quotes they viewed most recently will display automatically, along with related articles.
The redesign is the latest effort to provide MarketWatch readers with business news and tools that are faster and smarter, making it easier to invest and understand markets. On June 20th, the site added blogs from popular columnists including Herb Greenberg’s Market Blog, Frank Barnako’s Media Blog, and Bambi’s Blog with Bambi Francisco. The site will continue to add video programming and other applications in coming months.
