You may have noticed a link on the top of the Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra homepages pointing to 'RADIO BETA' and inviting you to 'Try it now and tell us what you think'. A 'beta' website is one that's still in development and being tested. This week we've started testing new beta homepages for Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra. These will replace the current ones later in the year when the BBC launches its new Radio & Music Product - a one-stop shop for listening to live and on demand radio from the BBC on any digital device. We'd really like to hear what you think of them to help us to continue to improve these pages before they move out of beta. The Welcome page explains the new features while this blog post by Chris Kimber, the Executive Product Manager for the Radio and Music product, has more detail about the release. As well as leaving a comment here, the feedback page has the option to complete a brief survey and send an email to us directly. If you're discussing the beta site on Twitter please use the hashtag #bbcradiobeta so we can keep track of all comments. Many thanks in advance for any of your feedback. There's more information via the links below.

• Radio and Music Product Update, Chris Kimber
• Radio in the Digital Age and video, Mark Friend
• BBC Online strategy, Ralph Rivera
• A guide to the beta homepages

Nigel Smith is the Interactive Editor, Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra

During the last 18 months, we've been relaunching parts of the Radio 4 website, redesigning for the wider page template now in use at bbc.co.uk and taking advantage of new technologies on offer.

The last programme website to move across is one of our most popular - The Archers, which consistently receives more 'listen again' requests per month than any other BBC radio programme. A site tour takes you through the features page-by-page.

Where should you start?

If you're an Archers newbie who has always been intrigued by the happenings in Ambridge but never taken the plunge, then start with our short introduction, kindly read for us by Archers fan Stephen Fry. And then listen and explore the links from the latest episode panel on the homepage, to find out more about the characters and locations in the current storylines.

Lighter or lapsed listeners can quickly get back up to speed with our timeline and a series of summaries of selected storylines, listed beneath.

And I hope that our regular users will adjust happily to the new layout for familiar content, and enjoy the regular news from the Archers blog, edited by our web producer and Archers scriptwriter Keri Davies. The blog will include a regular round-up of conversations and opinion from Archers audiences on our messageboard and on social networks - there are now more ways than ever for you to talk with, and be entertained by, your fellow listeners.

As always, we welcome your feedback, which helps us to continue to improve what we do - so please leave your comments.

Leigh Aspin is Interactive Editor at BBC Radio 4

• The Archers is on Radio 4 at 1400 and 1900 weekdays, 1000 (omnibus edition) and 1900 Sundays
• Follow The Archers on Twitter.
• There's a podcast for the Sunday omnibus edition and for the daily editions.
• The picture shows part of the Archers Timeline from the new site.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4

Editor's note. In this blog post, Radio 4's Interactive Editor explains how important the views of web site users have been to the redesign of the site. Please take a minute to leave a comment here and tell us what you think of the changes to the Radio 4 site - SB.

It's now over a year since we relaunched the Radio 4 website. During that time we've received lots of audience feedback. We've also relaunched some of our programme web sites (Woman's Hour, In Our Time, You & Yours, for instance) and become part of a wider range of conversations about Radio 4 on the web. So it's time to refresh our top-level pages to reflect all of this.

Home page

We've made some 'tweaks', rather than a wholesale redesign.

The top promotion area has divided opinion to some extent. Some correspondents (including contributors to this blog) felt strongly that the top image was too big; others liked it and told us it encouraged them to explore further. So we hope that an effective compromise is to reduce the visible image size slightly, in favour of text content, whilst retaining the impact that it makes.

On the top-right of the page, we've retained the navigation by title and subject and have added links to our biggest programme websites, some of which we've relaunched in the last few months. Take a look if you haven't done so already.

Returning to the left-hand side of the page, the 'Choice of the Day' area (the designers call this a 'carousel') didn't go down particularly well with users. Some people didn't understand how the carousel functioned, others simply chose not to use it. But the visible content was popular. So we've opted for a simpler presentation.

Underneath that, we've retained the popular iPlayer programmes list (updated daily) but have replaced the rather static list of podcasts in favour of highlighting some gems from the archive, which your feedback tells us you'd like to see more of.

We've also removed the 'topical tags' list. Technical constraints meant that these tags weren't always as topical as we wanted them to be. And research with users (we did a 'click-tracking' study) told us that hardly anyone clicked on them. We've used the space instead to promote some of the ever-growing conversation on the web about Radio 4.

Comment and Programmes pages

The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that we've added a fifth term to our top navigation - a page we've called "Comment", which aggregates a lot of the comment and conversations around Radio 4 - on our messageboards and blogs, and on social networks.

And we've improved our 'Programmes' page by only listing genres relevant to Radio 4 (no more 'animation'!), and by presenting the most recently broadcast programmes in each genre.

I hope that these design changes will make it easier to find programmes that inspire and entertain you, and introduce you to more content and conversation around your favourite programmes. I look forward to reading your comments.

My thanks to the BBC teams, to David Jones from the Radio 4 Interactive team and to our colleagues at Clearleft, who have helped with these changes.

Leigh Aspin is Interactive Editor at BBC Radio 4

Editor's note: this week's item from Feedback, Radio 4's accountability programme, concerns the redesign of one of the BBC's biggest web sites - SB.

Most of the comments - OK, complaints - we get on Feedback are about programmes (and of course trails, and grammar and pronunciation and presenters like Jonathan Ross and the attempted execution of 6 Music, and management pay, and travel expenses!).

Before the beginning of this month I would have said that I couldn't remember when we last had a complaint about the BBC News website. Like so many of you, I've been a great fan, and my family, and particularly my student daughters, have found the site invaluable not least for the context it provides to foreign news stories.

Now all seems to have changed utterly with what Steve Hermann the editor of the BBC News website calls "the biggest rethink of the design of the site since 2003."

As Mr Hermann said on the News Editors blog "Most of you commenting here... have been critical." Well here at Feedback all the correspondence we have received has been critical. The concerns range from alleged difficulties of navigation, wastage of space, the new banner which is "immoveable", "ridiculous classification" and unwanted ads. Faced with this barrage of criticism we asked Steve Herrmann to come onto Feedback and I began our interview by asking him why he believed such a major revamp was necessary:

So please keep letting Mr Hermann and Feedback know what you think about the redesign and any tweaks that may be made. By the way next week on Feedback I'll be talking to Kirsty Young about how she prepares for her Desert Island Discs interviews and trying to discover if she dislikes any of the guests, and we hope someone from the Today programme will be coming on to talk about the ever-shortening weather forecasts at 3 minutes to 8. No, make that 2 minutes to 8. No...

Roger Bolton presents Feedback on BBC Radio 4

• Listen again to the whole programme, get in touch with Feedback, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback web page.
• Visit the BBC News web site and see the new design for yourself.