The New What’s Up, USANA?
Hello!
My name is Sasha and I started as USANA’s manager of social media last November. This is my first blog post on the award-winning What’s Up, USANA? How exciting!
AND even more exciting, I get to announce the new look of What’s Up, USANA? If you’ve followed us for a while, you’ll notice some pretty significant changes.
But first, a brief history lesson.
The What’s Up, USANA? blog started in late 2008. That’s the year Hulu began, Jay-Z and Beyoncé got married and The Dark Knight blew all our minds. Since then, nearly 100 different contributors have penned a blog post for What’s Up, USANA? More than 2,500 posts have been viewed 6.2 million times (through January 2017).
What’s Up, USANA? is more than a company blog. Sure, we write about USANA products and offer tips on how to live the #USANAlifestyle. But it’s so much more.
What’s Up, USANA? is a vibrant online destination where readers—affiliated with USANA or not—receive premier health and wellness information to help them love life and live it. When we began working on the redesign last September, we knew we wanted to do more than give What’s Up, USANA? a facelift (though we believe the new look is stunning). We reworked the blog from the ground up to make the site more visitor-friendly and the content more shareable.
Here is what you’re likely to notice as a reader:
- Mobile and tablet friendly. Who uses desktops anymore? We thought it was about time WUU? became truly portable. Craving some fresh wellness knowledge while you wait for an appointment? Now you can read everywhere and on anything.
- A clear navigation bar designed for a friendlier user experience. The new navigation includes streamlined categories: wellness, lifestyle and business topics that are more inviting and make more sense for you. We’ve got eight years worth of content, so we wanted to make it as easy as possible to find! We freshened up some of the categories as well.
- A personalized browsing experience. This is my favorite part! We’ve long translated posts into Chinese, Spanish, and French. But now these posts will have a spot on their own pages. Simply select your preferred language from the drop-down menu to see and read only posts in that language.
- The new home landing page. A great place to showcase upcoming events or highlight our valued Social Media Ambassadors. With a dedicated landing page we have the flexibility to feature key stories for extended periods of time.
- The blog feed is cleaner and more streamlined for your viewing pleasure. Miss something on the day it was published? Now you can scroll through one feed to see all our posts in chronological order.
So, what do you think?
Do you like the makeover?
We’re pretty stoked about the new look and feel, and we are even more excited to share it with you. Also, there are some hidden Easter eggs throughout the new site.
Hint: search for a recipe post and see what happens.
This is a dynamic site and the team is continually working to make it the best it can be.
Please feel free to share your thoughts on what you like or don’t like. If you notice any weirdness or bugs, let us know that, too.
Hit us up on Facebook or Twitter, or send us an email ([email protected]).
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The WhatsUpUsana website header takes %50 of my display using a too little space to read the rest of the site when I expand the page to a 10 font size. This is due to the menu wrapping. I suppose some programmer thought it’d be more efficient to put 10(!) clickable links in the header menu bar at the expense of a small font size for the entire page. In their defense when I was younger a font size down to a 6 or 7 was perfectly legible, but now that I have the nearsightedness of the normal senior this doesn’t work for me or, I suspect, many, many others. Therefore I have a few options to read this website: 1) expand the page to a #10 font and scroll, 2) use a magnifying glass to read the small font, 3) don’t bother to read the website. Guess what I chose?
While I’m at it the USANA product manual suffers from the same thing. It is just ridiculous! The descriptions of the various products are confined to a quarter of a page with 3/4 of the page whitespace. I suppose some hip young designer laid out this page with no oversight approval of senior (old) management. I can only take some schadenfreude in realizing these hip young designers will become old.
Tim
Hi Tim,
Thanks for reading and commenting, we’re always looking for ways to improve our readers’ experience.
What device and browser you are viewing the site on?
We have bumped up the text size for blog posts, that should resolve the issue of the text being difficult to read.
To view our latest blog posts, you can visit whatsupusana.com/blog.
I will let our Creative team know about your concerns with the product manual.
Thanks again for your feedback. Please let us know if you’re still experiencing any issues.
I LOVE IT!!!! Congratulations on such a long and successful run, WUU?! I look forward to seeing what the future holds for the site and all the wonderful content you are going to be rolling out the rest of 2017 and beyond. And the best, part? I browsed the site and am typing this comment out on my phone!!! 🙂
Thanks Brian! Awesome to hear it worked so well on your phone — that was one of our major objectives! Always appreciate your support and look forward to working with you and your team on future WUU? posts!