New weather.com Provides Users Easy Access to More Localized Weather

The Weather Channel® (TWC) announces a redesign of its popular website weather.com, offering consumers an updated, user-centered experience available July 15.  Its first major redesign in 10 years, the new weather.com introduces a fresh, modern design and includes options for consumers to create a more customized weather experience. As a result of extensive consumer research, new features include a more intuitive navigation; more localized weather specific to addresses and places of interest; saved locations visible from every page on the site; integrated user-generated content through iWitness Weather; and customizable apps. 

"The weather.com redesign is all about consumers and creating a site that addresses how they want to view the weather," said Monisha Longacre, vice president of product strategy and development for The Weather Channel.  "Consumers were having trouble finding certain content on our site, so we surfaced the valuable information they were looking for in the navigation, and we created customizable tools for a comprehensive user experience."

More details of the new features on the redesigned weather.com:

• All-new navigation - the main navigation on the site is now categorized in a more intuitive, weather-centric manner to focus on the content consumers visit weather.com to find
• Local weather - a weather snapshot localized beyond just city or ZIP code using TWC's patented TruPoint technology. Enter specific addresses or places (i.e., "Wrigley Field," "Disney World") for the most accurate weather that matters most to you
• Saved locations - consumers can add up to three locations most important to them for quick weather access at the top of every page on the site, and apply nicknames (i.e., "Mom's house," "school")
• Weather apps - customize your local weather forecast on the site by adding topic-specific apps suited to your lifestyle and activities, such as airport delays, golf course conditions, pollen forecasts and more
• "Share" Widgets - embed weather forecasts and interactive maps directly into a favorite website, including Facebook, MySpace, personalized web pages and blogs
• iWitness Weather - consumers can share their weather story by submitting both photos and videos through a new streamlined upload process for user-generated content
• Relevant weather stories - Stay informed of the top news stories of the day and the weather headlines from each region in a larger, more prominent graphical presentation
• Cross-platform design - the site's simplified, clean design incorporates visual aspects of The Weather Channel network graphics for cohesive cross-platform integration. The TV schedule is highlighted and direct links allow access to mobile, desktop and widget products.

The weather.com redesign, in partnership with exclusive launch partner Toyota, offers a complete reworking of sitewide navigation and both the home page and the local weather page, which is the page that shows weather for a specific ZIP code, city name or event location.  These two pages alone account for more than 50 percent of the massive traffic numbers weather.com receives.  Each month, the top-20 website sees more than 40 million unique visitors.

View, interact with, and customize your own weather site at www.weather.com beginning July 15.  A beta version of the new site was seen by some users in the two weeks leading up to launch.