Yandex Revamps Its Homepage

Internet, April 4, 2013. Yandex (NASDQ:YNDX) today unveiled its newly redesigned homepage. The most relevant information is now highly visible and easily accessible in a more streamlined format.

The homepage now has less text and feels airier making it easier to navigate. Graphics have replaced some text blocks, and related items have been grouped together – for example, news from mass media outlets are now found alongside news taken from blogs. We have moved the most popular services to a more visible position and our specialist services went to the background – for example, Yandex.Mail is now in a more prominent spot, while Yandex.Direct and Yandex.Metrica have moved down to the bottom of the page. The Yandex.Maps feature has been expanded, so that users can now find the nearest pharmacy or cafe with one click, along with taxis, public transport routes and panoramas. As a result, the homepage is both simpler and more functional. Thanks to its new layout, the homepage now loads up to 50 percent faster than the previous version.

“Yandex is both a search engine and the gateway to the internet for millions of people,” said Vera Leyzerovich, head of desktop and mobile products at Yandex. “On the homepage, besides the search bar, users are accustomed to seeing information that they need every day – news, weather, exchange rates, the traffic situation. But the more data it includes, the harder it is to navigate. On the new version, we have retained the emphasis on search and kept the page informative and familiar for its users, but at the same time we have made it clear and uncluttered, so people will enjoy visiting it again and again.”

Yandex is Russia’s most visited web site and most popular search engine, with 45 million visitors each month to yandex.ru (comScore data for February 2013). Users’ opinions were taken into account when designing the new homepage, with some users trying experimental versions in the development stage. Based on their comments and page clicks, the final version was chosen. As before, users can adjust the home page to suit their needs, changing settings on yandex.ru to alter the position of various blocks, remove unnecessary elements and add widgets from Yandex’s catalogue.

Yandex’s new homepage design is its twelfth. It last updated the homepage three years ago. To see all previous versions, go to company.yandex.ru/about/pages.

Contact:
Media Relations
Vladimir Isaev, Ochir Mandzhikov
Phone: +7 495 739-7000
E-mail: pr@yandex-team.com