The website of one of the UK’s biggest selling regional newspapers, the Express & Star, has been given improved navigation, clean lines and a fresh design.
Visitors from the Black Country, West Midlands and beyond will be able to use the “state-of-the-art” site to access up to the minute news and sport from the Express & Star’s team of journalists.
The site also has a powerful new local business directory from localmole.co.uk plus a brand new motoring channel powered by motors.co.uk, bringing readers cars for sale from across the region and the UK.
Photos have also been enlarged to showcase the work of the newspaper’s photographic team while the layout has been simplified to make the content more user-friendly.
The new site is part of the portfolio managed by the MNA’s new media team, MNA Digital.
The link-up with Motors.co.uk, the third biggest car sales site in the country, offers motor dealers in the area a highly competitive service with both a regional and national focus.
The directory service on the website has been improved with the partnership with Trinity Mirror's Local Mole business directory, which is seen as a direct competitor to Yellow Pages' online Yell operation.
MNA New Media Manager David Ratcliffe explained: "The new-look website, backed by the fresh platforms, will give the MNA an unrivalled commercial opportunity.
"It has a new look, a cleaner design and is intended to be more user friendly. People will see it has a much stronger use of images than many other news websites.
“The feedback has been very positive so far from users who have emailed us or commented via social media such as Twitter.
“We have plans to launch more exciting platforms on the site in the coming weeks.”
Work on redeveloping the website of sister title the Shropshire Star, www.shropshirestar.com will begin shortly.
The publishers expect the new look to bring further rises in web traffic for expressandstar.com. An ABCe audit for the period January 1 to June 30 2009 showed there were on average 443,000 unique users per month, with a daily average of 27,055.
This was up significantly on the title’s first ABCe audit, conducted in April 2007, which recorded 162,820 visitors, with a daily average of 9,421.
Other recent additions to the sites have included an innovative partnership with ITN, whereby the MNA sites feature national and international news videos from the content provider, along with a fantasy football game played by more than 6,000 people.
