The new design of AOL News sparked a memory of some behavior I observed during recent user testing. When users were asked to identify the latest story on our section fronts, they often picked the one listed at the top of the page.

This presented an interesting problem for our upcoming redesign at HeraldTribune.com. Often our section fronts are sorted by the editors. The story at the top of the page is supposed to be the most important, not the latest.

I’m wondering whether blogs are starting to shape the expectations of online readers. A blog always puts the latest post at the top of the page.

AOL News is clearly taking advantage of this emerging point of view. Most of the stories listed in the main column on the home page look like a blog. But they're not exclusively ordered by timeline. Looks like some older stories move up the list, which I'm sure will confuse its users if asked to identify the latest story.

Does it matter whether users perceive the story at the top as the latest or the most important? Most studies show that readers see breaking news as the No. 1 value of news Web sites. If a returning reader sees the story at the top of the page is unchanged, then perhaps they think your entire site is less frequently updated than you’d hope. That means fewer repeat visitors.

My suggestion for AOL News: Let users sort the blog. The default presentation can show "top stories right now." (That's the label AOL uses.) But also let stories be sorted chronologically, or by what's most popular using the thumbs up ratings attached to the stories. USAToday.com makes a good try at this functionality on its home page.