New homepage?

Regular visitors to Bassmaster.com may notice our homepage looks different today.

Regular visitors to Bassmaster.com may notice our homepage looks different today. Sure enough we’ve been working on some improvements to make your experience following events like the 2014 GEICO Bassmaster Classic presented by Diet Mountain Dew and GoPro that much better. Here’s a rundown of what’s changed on the Bassmaster.com homepage:

Bigger photos: The sport of bass fishing presents us with so many great images, and with James Overstreet, Seigo Seito, Steve Bowman, Darren Jacobsen and others on our team, B.A.S.S. has the best outdoor photographers in the business. We want to showcase that photography on the homepage in a bigger way.

The Latest moves to top right: On our old homepage, the Latest ran all the way down our left column. We wanted to get the Top 10 stories of the day into a more efficient space, and “above the fold.”

Wider page: The homepage is now wider, giving us more room in the top menu (you’ll see there’s room up there now for “GEICO Classic”) and more room for content on the page. And the design of the new homepage is now more horizontal, which plays to how web visitors increasingly prefer to view content.

Room for more features: For much of the year, we have so much strong content going through the homepage, that if we’re not careful, some of the good stuff rotates off the homepage before folks have a chance to see it. The Features area below the main images gives us a prominent place to keep those stories front and center.

B.A.S.S. Factory: New to the homepage is the B.A.S.S. Factory sponsored by our partner Rapala. You’ll find it in the right column. In it you’ll find a new bass fishing fact every day of the year. Today’s fact is, “Bobby and Chris Lane are the only brothers to compete against each other in the Bassmaster Classic more than once.” Click through to the main page, and you’ll find hundreds of amazing facts from the fertile mind of Senior Editor Ken Duke.

Permanent place for videos:  Videos are increasingly an important part of Bassmaster.com. Last year visitors consumed nearly 6 million video streams on the site. So we wanted a permanent spot on the homepage to showcase our favorite videos.

More attention for Columnists:  Some of the best content on the site comes from our columnists – including Don Barone, Pete Robbins, Kevin VanDam and many other top anglers. We’ve played up this area with a bigger lead image and more space. 

Premier sponsors: B.A.S.S. couldn’t do what we do without the support of 11 world-class premier sponsors. You’ll see their logos nestled with our logo on the lower part of the page. It’s another way to show how important they are to us and the sport of bass fishing. 

Web visitors, we thank you for your continued support as well!