The new site, which goes live on 18th February, further enhances and expands the users’ experience by offering clearer navigation, new content and greater interaction.
A greater focus has been given to those core areas Cosmopolitan’s audience love most; fashion and beauty:
• The ever popular ‘New In Store’ feature will continue alongside a new weekly ‘Fashion under £50’ franchise – directly feeding readers hunger for fabulous and affordable fashion
• Cosmopolitan’s very own ‘Personal Stylists’ (Clare Smith and Natasha Guiotto) will have immediate engagement with users by blogging regularly about key trends and helping them to shop their shape
• Behind the scenes videos of Cosmopolitan’s core fashion shoots will bring Shelly Vella’s and Sairey Stemp’s (Cosmopolitan’s Fashion Director and Fashion Editor) fashion shoots to life as well as telling the reader where to buy the clothes they see on screen
• A new beauty makeover tool whereby readers can try new hairstyles and colours and share them with their friends
Additional highlights of the new site include:
• Further extension of the magazine online by the introduction of key blogs by Cosmopolitan’s editorial staff. These will range from news-driven commentary on dating, sex and relationships in spin-off blogs from Cosmopolitan’s ‘Sex and the Single Girl/Not So Single Girl’ columnists, to the latest advice on key trends and the best buys from the fashion and beauty teams. All of which will provide readers with more immediate engagement with their favourite elements of Cosmopolitan
• An upgrade to Cosmopolitan’s dating channel which will include video functionality allowing users to upload video profiles of themselves
• A whole new Cosmo on Campus channel which complements Cosmopolitan’s highly successful spin-off magazine for students, featuring cash and careers advice, money-off vouchers, bargain buys of the day and city guides
• A complete makeover of the ever-popular community forums, which will include private messaging functionality
The website features fresher fonts, a brighter colour palette and vibrant imagery. Whilst remaining completely complementary to the print magazine, the new design reflects the confident look and feel introduced to Cosmopolitan last year by Creative Director, Stuart Selner.
It also provides advertisers with a technically sophisticated and premium environment in which to engage with their target audiences and offers new methods of doing so. Advertisers secured during the launch period include Estée Lauder, Müllerlight, DKNY Fragrances, John Frieda and New Look.
The refresh follows an outstanding year for the website, say the publishers, which recently reported an ABCe of 765,880 monthly unique browsers (a year-on-year increase of more than 273,500) and 11.8 million page impressions (88% annual increase). These figures have already been superseded by Omiture’s latest statistics in January – 860,000 unique browsers and 12.5 million page impressions.
“The redesign brings the website completely up-to-date with the look, feel and tone of the brand as a whole, but with its own unique content,” said Cosmopolitan’s Rebecca Miskin (pictured). “The past year has seen significant growth for Cosmopolitan.co.uk, which is one of the most popular destinations for young women online. Our aim is to expand this loyalty even further as we make the Cosmopolitan brand available to women in the medium of their choice.”
“We have listened extensively to user feedback and acted on this to launch the new site, which offers an enhanced environment to fuel our already highly interactive community,” said Pat Mcnulty, Acting Web Editor at Cosmopolitan. “Cosmopolitan.co.uk has an ever-increasing audience of loyal, networked and engaged young women and provides them with a unique destination. We look forward to growing this even further to become the number one destination for them online.”
The new website is hosted on Magnus, an electronic publishing platform developed by Hearst Magazines Digital Media, a division of NatMag’s parent company, Hearst Corporation US. Global log-in across the network means users can move across all of Hearst’s websites without re-registering.
