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A few weeks ago we announced that we were making some improvements to the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's Weather website, including a clearer, more focused design of the homepage.

Since then we've been running a "beta" version of the new site to allow us to try out these new features and listen to your comments and feedback. Following that successful trial period, I'm pleased to say that we are launching the new weather site today.

We've had a great response to the beta site which has received around 230,000 visitors per week and I'd like to thank those who have taken the time to try it out and give us your comments. These figures are very similar to the numbers of people who have tested beta versions of the new iPlayer site and the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ homepage, which shows how many of you value the weather website.

We've worked hard to improve the functionality of the site, whilst retaining all of the more detailed forecast information such as humidity, pressure and visibility. The majority of the feedback we've received has been very positive with many users saying that a variety of information can be accessed at a glance, they like the design and perhaps most importantly, the website is clearer and easier to use.

I've blogged about the key improvements to the site previously but as a reminder these are:

• A more focused and clear homepage design giving instant access to a five day forecast and a video forecast.
• Easily personalised forecast favourites which allow you to save a range of locations to appear in the drop down menu.
• Improved navigation across the site allowing more editorial content, including audience pictures on the homepage.

We've listened to your suggestions while the beta site has been live and also implemented some changes that were already in the pipeline such as the print function and the full UK forecast map.

Although we're launching the new site officially today, we'll continue to look at ways to improve the site and there are aspects that we'll continue to work on over the coming weeks. These include making the maps load more smoothly and developing a mobile version of the site.

In addition to these improvements, we want to hear your views on the new site and we'll continue to monitor your feedback, we're using the #bbcweather hashtag on Twitter to group conversation, or you can comment below.

Liz Howell is head of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Weather.

Rain or shine, we know that many of you like to access your weather forecasts through the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's Weather website.

The last redesign for the website happened in 2009, and since then we've been working on plans to make it even better and update the site so that it benefits from the latest technological developments.

As a result, we are today launching . This is a work-in-progress version of the site which will eventually replace .

So in the coming weeks, we'll be running this beta version of the new design alongside the current Weather website, and you'll be able to access and use both of them. During this period we'll be ensuring that the new site operates as intended - it's important to ensure we've got the basics right in order to deliver the best experience possible at full launch.

They key improvements around the new site are:

A more focused and clear homepage design gives instant access to a five day and a video forecast and also has a short summary of UK weather. The map indicates the weather conditions in selected locations at the time shown in the right hand corner, and if you're after a more detailed full colour UK map with a five day time line just click "Detailed UK Weather". Our international users will see a world map on their homepage.

The easily personalised forecast favourites allow you to save a range of locations to appear in the drop down menu on the right hand side of the page. With the beta, when you access the site for the first time in the UK, you'll see the weather in Glasgow as the default option for the time being. We are working on this showing the biggest city in your nation, so bear with us.

Improved navigation across the site, allowing there to be more editorial content and audience pictures on the home page. This means the left hand side navigation has gone, and all the key content is accessible through the home page. The latest weather related stories will be where the 'Welcome' message is now on the beta, and news stories about climate and environment can be found from the Science and Environment section of the News website.

Last but not least, all the important, detailed weather information is still there - location pages show humidity, pressure and visibility as well as UV, pollution, pollen & observations. The country guides will also still be available, and the expectation is that the current list of countries will be available via a link on every page and will eventually become part of the country pages with the five day forecast map.

The improvements to the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Weather site are part of a bigger programme of change within ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Online - we've been refreshing the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's ten key areas or 'products' to move towards a more distinctive family of websites, supported by a shared infrastructure to allow more intuitive journeys between them. Last summer the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News website was updated, ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iPlayer followed in September, and at the moment there is a beta running for the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖpage too.

³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Weather will still have its unique look and feel, and the new design will introduce improved and easy-to-use functionality. The redesign & introduction of new infrastructure also means that the new site will be easier for us to optimise for mobile and connected TV devices in the future.

In the past months, we have invited over a thousand users to try out prototype versions of it, but we're still very keen to hear any feedback from you, so please have a look around . We've created a handy user guide accessible from the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Weather beta or which should help to explain new features, and this carries a survey option. Do get in touch! We're using the #bbcweather hashtag on Twitter to group conversation, or you can comment below.

My colleague Peter in Future Media will be writing a post on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Internet blog next week with more details, and other blogs about the user experience and technical aspects of the redesign will follow.

Liz Howell is head of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Weather