I think the navigation bar is very busy. It shows up over multiple lines, with different sized and shaded buttons. On mobile/tablet, it takes multiple screen lengths. It seems overwhelming and unfocused.
Perhaps because the navigation is overwhelming, you decided to duplicate your dropdown menu for most of the landing page.
I'm not sure why there is such an emphasis on your media coverage and authors at the top of the landing page. Usually that is a tactic to build social proof for customers feel comfortable buying from a new/unknown startup, but as far as I can tell you're not trying to make a sale.
It took me several clicks to get to an article with an interactive graph -- the cool part. More than just the data, you had good writing in catchy, accessible prose.
My suggestions would be
1) to highlight one cool / recent article+graph at the top of the landing page.
2) Simplify your topic organization; you have 16 different high-level topics, with further subtopics. That relegates you to an unwieldy dropdown. I realize you may be using the SDGs, but I'd prefer 5-6 MECE categories like Environment, Health, Economic Development... into which you can organize SDGs. If you had fewer categories you could fit navigation tabs or make use of UI techniques.
3) Overall, decide on what flow you want from the user and design around it. You have a newsletter, donation, even another web domain for SDG tracking. Who are your primary constituents, and what are you trying to help them accomplish? Is it to delight and educate laypersons, maximize small-dollar donations, highlight the academic rigor of the authors' analysis...?
As a reader, I would come back to the site often if it focused on showing me all the coolest data analysis. I might even browse there instead of Hacker News.
Right now, though, it seems closer in my mind to the World Bank's Open Data website, which has an overwhelming amount of great open data, which I would only visit if I were looking to access a raw dataset.
If lay readership is your primary goal, I would suggest looking for design inspiration from media publications like https://fivethirtyeight.com/ or https://www.newyorker.com/ . Even xkcd.com, which has dated design language, achieves the UX of putting the catchy content up front, and providing navigation for people who want more, rather than the other way around.
Perhaps because the navigation is overwhelming, you decided to duplicate your dropdown menu for most of the landing page.
I'm not sure why there is such an emphasis on your media coverage and authors at the top of the landing page. Usually that is a tactic to build social proof for customers feel comfortable buying from a new/unknown startup, but as far as I can tell you're not trying to make a sale.
It took me several clicks to get to an article with an interactive graph -- the cool part. More than just the data, you had good writing in catchy, accessible prose.
My suggestions would be
1) to highlight one cool / recent article+graph at the top of the landing page.
2) Simplify your topic organization; you have 16 different high-level topics, with further subtopics. That relegates you to an unwieldy dropdown. I realize you may be using the SDGs, but I'd prefer 5-6 MECE categories like Environment, Health, Economic Development... into which you can organize SDGs. If you had fewer categories you could fit navigation tabs or make use of UI techniques.
3) Overall, decide on what flow you want from the user and design around it. You have a newsletter, donation, even another web domain for SDG tracking. Who are your primary constituents, and what are you trying to help them accomplish? Is it to delight and educate laypersons, maximize small-dollar donations, highlight the academic rigor of the authors' analysis...?
As a reader, I would come back to the site often if it focused on showing me all the coolest data analysis. I might even browse there instead of Hacker News.
Right now, though, it seems closer in my mind to the World Bank's Open Data website, which has an overwhelming amount of great open data, which I would only visit if I were looking to access a raw dataset.
If lay readership is your primary goal, I would suggest looking for design inspiration from media publications like https://fivethirtyeight.com/ or https://www.newyorker.com/ . Even xkcd.com, which has dated design language, achieves the UX of putting the catchy content up front, and providing navigation for people who want more, rather than the other way around.