IT looks different, doesn't it?

It's been more than 20 years since we launched The Star Online, Malaysia's first news portal (and still the No.1 English news site in terms of traffic), but we have never rested on our laurels.

Over the last few months, you may have noticed user surveys popping up when you came to the site. You gave us your opinions, we heard you, and we have put that front and centre of our redesign.

The online world keeps changing, and so do people's reading habits. New technologies come, and sometimes go.

There's the smartphone, for one. As the Internet world increasingly went mobile, websites were first told to be mobile-friendly, then mobile-optimised, and now, well, it's a mobile-first world.

But that doesn't mean we can ignore the desktop experience either!

There are technologies, techniques and tools like big data analytics and dynamic content that allow website owners to not only improve the user interface, but the entire user experience.

And The Star Online intends to harness them to make our site better for you.

With increasing traffic coming to The Star Online – our monthly unique visitors have jumped from 5.2 million in 2016 to 7.5 million in the first six months of this year, while monthly pageviews have jumped from 49 million last year to 59 million – we have had to make our backend more robust too.

This means faster loading times, even as we provide more rich content, including video and interactive infographics.

This also means a more responsive and intuitive website (and we hope you'll find it so).

Here are some of the changes we have implemented:

A more pleasant reading experience

We've redesigned the visual experience, from fonts to how pictures are displayed, to make your reading experience a more enjoyable one.

We have also repositioned sections to bring the content you enjoy to more prominence.

A more relevant reading experience

But the design is not merely cosmetic. On the backend, we're improving our metadata tagging to make sure you are presented with stories that are relevant to you.

With dynamic content, in the long run, we aim to make your reading more personalised, customised to your preferences.

No silos

But we don't want you to be stuck in an echo chamber either. You will still be presented with stories from other parts of The Star Online, and even outside of it.

This will happen not only on the homepage, but even as you drill down into the stories that interest you most.

And with many of you coming to individual stories off social media, we want to make sure you quickly get to more engaging stories on our site.

Easier navigation

We've also consolidated and collapsed the various sections, so that you can quickly explore topics of interest to you, no matter where they appear in the newspaper, or even if they are online exclusives.

The Star Online is now even less an electronic mirror of The Star newspaper, but complements it even more.

A new horizon

This is just the start, of course. We'll be doing more over the next few weeks. Do drop us a line at feedback@thestar.com.my with your feedback.

Everything you know and love in The Star Online is still here. Only, you know, better.