For a few years now, I have been an avid reader of Inman News. It has been one of the very few websites I visit several times a day (along with techcrunch, valleywag (I know I shouldn’t), gigaom and of course lakeplace.com & landbin.com).

A couple of weeks ago, Inman news launched a redesigned version of their site. I like the effort, I like the direction - but overall I have found the new design to be a deterent. I am writing about this because I just realized that I have not been visiting Inman News as frequently…actually, today was the first time I visited the site in a while.

I read some initial feedback from Pat Kitano of Transparent Real Estate when the new site first launched - he talked about a washed out look - and Inman News took his comments to heart and fixed the color of their text (went to black). Since ui design is one of the hats I have been wearing for quite a few years - I would offer this advice to Inman News - simplify your homepage layout.

The new header is great (especially the updated logo) - but I would highly recommend using tabs in your main navigation area (News, Inman Blog, Community, etc..) As it is right now, your main navigation area - the most important links on your website - remains “washed out.”

I like the main headline/teaser on the homepage - but you should expand the text all the way across the page, move your “Top News, Most Comments, Most Emailed” headlines below your main headline and increase the font size. In otherwords - reduce your content area to one column. I would also change the hyper-link color back to default blue (its OK to use more than two colors on a website).

I would recommend following this one column layout (and font size/color changes) down the page to include the Inman TV section and Inman Blog Section. Below that, you could go back to a two column layout (but make it 50/50) to include your blog network, member spotlight, reader comments, etc..

I believe its all about usability - the path of least resistance - and I would be willing to bet that I am not the only one who keeps forgetting to visit the new Inman News since the new design was pushed to the public.

Here is a fun exercise - below is a screen shot from my firefox browser. I clean the URL’s out of this every couple of months - but by scrolling down - you can see what the most important websites are to me (as they are the first ones I visited after cleaning my cache).  What websites made your cut?