Radar, Cloudflare's real-time view into global Internet trends, launched in 2020 and quickly found an audience among network operators and academic researchers who mine its data for industry trends and global events. But the platform was always meant for a broader set of users — journalists, human rights advocates, policymakers, everyday readers — and that ambition ran into a usability problem. The redesign described here is an attempt to widen the entry point without sacrificing analytical depth.
What the old landing page got wrong
The previous landing page demonstrated the breadth of Radar's data but made it hard to parse. A bento-box layout gave every module similar visual weight, vertical cards broke natural reading patterns, and the styling sat apart from Cloudflare's wider brand. The redesign team heard the same complaint from users: one external user said Radar was difficult to show to his students, which underlined how intimidating the experience could be on first contact. The goal became a landing page that shaped a clearer path through the content rather than presenting everything at once.
Cohesion mattered as much as layout. A consistent Cloudflare experience signals that Radar is an authoritative source and lets familiar patterns carry users through complex information.
A map as the anchor
The redesigned landing page leads with geography. A map is a familiar reference point for users of all backgrounds, and while the Internet often operates outside national borders, its relevance to daily life is easiest to grasp when it's tied to a place. The top section pairs traffic with outages, leading on outages because they are among the most concrete, timely, and salient signals about the Internet's state; traffic communicates the scale and breadth of Radar's data. The map doubles as navigation, moving users from the global view down into specific countries, trends, and data stories.
The old bento-box chart widgets became a tabbed flow. Tabs surface summary statistics that hint at what Radar can do, then offer a call to action to dig into the data — creating hierarchy, keeping the page manageable, and previewing the platform's range.
Building a design language
Radar's visual language was derived from three existing Cloudflare pillars:
- Marketing pages, such as cloudflare.com
- Content experiences, such as the Cloudflare Blog and Developer Docs
- Product experiences
Radar sits at the intersection of all three. It is a data product, but public-facing and content-rich. The resulting strategy blends approachability from marketing with the structure and navigability of content, while migrating to Kumo components keeps the interface maintainable within Cloudflare's product system.
Iterating on the map
The team knew from the start that the landing page had to convey Radar's global scope, and a map was judged the clearest way to do it. Iteration moved between two failure modes: early versions were too dense, attempting to prove credibility with data-heavy visuals; later versions swung toward marketing-style graphics that read as approachable but threatened to make live data feel static or over-summarized. The shipped direction sits between those poles, carrying the feel of live data while staying readable.
Where Radar goes next
Because Cloudflare handles roughly 20% of all web traffic, Radar is positioned to tell stories about the Internet that few other datasets can. The stated aim is to give every user real-time insight across security, performance, and traffic. This redesign is a foundational step toward that: future work will keep targeting tools, visualizations, and storytelling frameworks that lower friction for new audiences, while the underlying data infrastructure continues to deepen.
The team is soliciting feedback on the redesign — what works, what doesn't, and which insights remain hard to find. Responses go to @CloudflareRadar on X, radar.cloudflare.com on Bluesky, or [email protected].
