Facebook Fan Pages Will Soon Tout a New Layout
Facebook has announced that a new “streamlined” look will be rolling out any day now for its Fan Pages. They are better organizing the columns of data, housing biographical information on the left and fan page posts on the right. This should sound like a no-brainer. The eye doesn’t like having to compete with a two columns and trying to order posts. Good move Facebook. Hopefully they will apply this logic to user profiles as well.
The Good
- Aside from grouping content more logically, fan page admins will also find tools they use are organized more effectively.
- Managing Ads will be easier for page admins as well.
- The “Pages to Watch” feature—which is relatively new—will be expanded. More stats will be revealed on competing fan pages, including which content they posted had the highest engagement. We’re not sure how intimate the metrics on your competitors will be, but we expect actual reach and engagement hard figures will be lump sum. The granular details should remain hidden. Perhaps Facebook will allow a page to list more than five competing fan pages, or better yet, group competing pages into categories like “local competitors,” or “original content creators.”
The Bad (The Unknown)
- Early screenshots of the new fan page designs reveal a glaring hole. It looks as though fan page tabs have disappeared, or been relegated to some isolated back corner buried part of the layout. It’s still early to guess whether Facebook engineers are phasing this feature out or not.
- It looks like cover pages will continue to have the same dimensions, though it would be nice to give them a little more screen real estate.
- We’ll post more on the topic as we get our hands on the latest fan page design ourselves. Check back for more info soon!
Updates
- Facebook has been allowing fan page admins to join a waitlist for the new fan page rollout.
- Users who have already committed to the new fan page layout are seeing the following message: “Ready To See Your Updated Page? Your Page will automatically be updated on March 31.” So it looks like all fan pages will be converted in the next couple weeks.
- Still no word on whether fan page tabs are going to be deprecated. We’ve hear they are still there, but buried out of sight under the “More” button drop down box in the fan page navigation bar. That does not bode well. Where will brands showcase their apps and contests now?