Revealing refreshed WhichCar.com.au homepages and navigation

This feels good. Our team has been working hard on some important, useful and fun new features, and we're excited to now reveal a major upgrade to the WhichCar site.

Long-time readers will recall that we launched a new-look WhichCar.com.au sometime ago, introducing strong new WhichCar? branding, a big-and-bold homepage makeover, and awesome new landing pages for our iconic mags.

And as you've been seeing every day since then, we completely reimagined the page designs for our news, reviews, comparisons, gear guides, opinion pieces and more.

Some changes are obvious, while - as all good engineers and product designers will tell you – some of the most important features and improvements are ones most people may never notice.

The guiding principle for this update was to build more of our navigation around the needs and preferences you've shown when visiting WhichCar –known by the geeks as 'user intent and audience behaviour'.

The result is that our content, including all of our news and reviews, guides and advice stories – right down to specific brands and types of vehicles – is easier to find and more discoverable than ever before.

What's new?

If our homepage is your regular starting point, that's where you'll see the most significant changes.

In that "Have you had a haircut? Something's different..." way, the improvements to our homepage might not be obvious at first blush.

🔽 Show me the way: The biggest change is that we have a newly optimised navigation bar across the very top of the page.

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Here, you'll find the four pillars of our content and buying guides: CARS, 4X4, ELECTRIC and MODIFIED.

CARS is where you'll get our news, reviews, comparisons and mega tests for all of the new passenger cars, SUVs, utes and sports cars on sale in Australia – or on their way – along with our New Car Calendars, buying guides, and advice for owners and buyers alike. This section is, primarily, where you'll find the bulk of our Wheels stories.

4X4 is, of course, home to the 4X4 Australia team – with links to more news and reviews, our Popular and Best Buy lists, and our hugely useful Gear Guides, where we do the testing and researching on dozens of gadgets and accessories so you don't have to.

ELECTRIC is the pick to click when you need to know how and where to take those first steps into a whole new paradigm of motoring. News, reviews, comparisons and buyers guides, advice and guides on finance and insurance and charging, lists of the most popular and compelling models, and all the latest trending stories.

Finally, MODIFIED is the stomping ground for Street Machine. Here you'll find all the latest news, tech guides, events announcements and coverage, custom cars, and our hugely popular Carnage content.

Amongst all of these, you'll also find links to our video pages, detailed coverage of new-car sales results and delivery delays, and... well, there's a lot more to come, but we won't give it all away just yet.

🔽 So hot right now: Quick links to important and 'of the moment' pages

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Directly beneath the main SHOUTY ALL-CAPS menu is a smaller, quieter and more reserved set of links that the smart folk will come to know as some of our most important. Some of the items in this row will probably always have a home where they are, while others will swap in and out as big events come and go. Think motor shows, Streety's big 'nats' events, election and budget coverage, hotly anticipated new-model reveals – that sort of thing.

🔽 Everything everywhere all at once: Our big new feature panel is your dashboard for the latest and most important stories in motoring.

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Becomes...

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This is surely the most obvious change for regular visitors. Where you would have previously found a moving carousel of large feature tiles, sliding from one story to the next, we're now presenting seven stories for you to cast your eyes over quickly and effectively.

As before, our page-top feature panel is home to the news and reviews we know to be the most important for Australian new-car buyers and enthusiasts (you won't always agree, of course!), curated throughout the day to stay fresh and keep you on top of the latest goings-on.

🔽 Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling...

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Further down the page, you'll see the same tried-and-true view we launched in 2021. That means all of our latest news and advice stories are posted in chronological order on the left, while reviews, comparisons and features dominate the wide centre column.

That section is again followed by some familiar elements, these blocks again proving themselves a hit with our first release.

Peppered across the page further down, you'll find new 'widgets' showing some Micro Machines-sized images that will direct you to the landing pages for the most popular and best-selling models on the market right now. Those lists will evolve with the market, of course.

🔽 One more thing.

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This is actually one we rolled out quietly in 2022. As you scroll down the page, you'll see the Hot Topics section, populated with links to special Topics pages covering – wait for it, topics – that we know are hot for buyers right now. Each of those pages hosts sections dedicated to news, reviews, advice and other curated stories. We reckon they're mighty useful, even for us, in quickly finding the information you need.

Is that it? What's next?

In terms of things you can see, yep. We've also introduced a number of new controls and upgrades behind the scenes for our hard-working content team, along with a host of optimisations designed to load our content faster so you can get on with life.

From here, we'll be watching how each of these new sections performs and best serves our audience – and we're looking forward to your feedback and bug reports. We're expecting plenty of the former and hopefully not too many of the latter!

As for what's next, I won't give away much right now – and I won't pretend our stealthy dev team invites this "can we, what if, I'd love to..." Publishing Director to every roadmap discussion – although it's no secret that our current Search function isn't impressing anybody right now. Watch for improvements there, but in the meantime, we believe our hugely optimised navigation will make it much easier for you to discover all the content you need.

Finally, a big thanks.

I'll take this opportunity before the curtains close, to thank you, our audience, for all the terrific and considered feedback over the past couple of years. The response to our relaunch in 2021 was hugely positive, but in particular, the changes we've made this week are thanks to the thoughtful comments of our visitors and regular readers. So, cheers. 🙏

And, of course, our tech team. You've recently seen our Chief Technical Officer, Tim Kenington, writing away on a Mitsubishi Triton review, and our Product Manager Michael Fisher with his thoughts on my recent WRX Sportwagon long-termer. These fellas led our talented dev team through months of work and – even worse – dozens of planning and demonstration sessions with our business leadership, and I couldn't be more grateful. Thanks, gents! 💪

Got thoughts? I'll meet you in the comments below.