The new design framework focuses on speed, legibility and user experience, as well as championing the premium content being produced by the London-based editorial teams of both brands, says IBT Media.
Newsweek’s redesign for its European readers features larger headlines and image sizes, with stories that are easier to read and faster to download. The homepage highlights more articles, features the magazine’s cover image each week and includes more room for integrated sponsorships. To facilitate a better experience for readers that are constantly scrolling, the site includes sticky navigation bars and social sharing. The new look will also feature a digital treatment for premium magazine content for its viewers online.
“The clear, clean look of the redesign is great for readers and really makes the most of Newsweek’s superb images and graphics,” said Matt McAllester, Newsweek Europe Editor. “By integrating advertising better we’ve improved the user experience online and our newly expanded newsroom is very excited about the possibilities offered by the new storytelling tools.”
According to the publishers, this elegant redesign and functionality is also evident in the UK edition of the International Business Times website. Article pages will include a longer “magazine” format for feature stories as well as a cleaner and simpler look for breaking news. Readers will also be able to easily share their favourite stories with their social media networks, navigate the different sections of the sites, while pages are optimized for mobile and video
“These upgraded digital properties are an important move for IBT Media as it continues to grow its global readership,” said Jeremy Makin, VP of Sales for IBT Media in (EMEA) Europe, Middle East and Africa.
Makin - who helped launch Vodafone Group’s first venture into mobile advertising – says “The redesigns place ad effectiveness on a par with audience experience. We have ensured that the advertising blends harmoniously with the content and is both impactful, engaging and viewable,” he added.
These upgraded digital properties represent an important move by IBT Media as it sets out to retain, enhance and grow its readership across EMEA.
“With programmatic revenues up 85 per cent year on year, a staggering 200 million unique users on IBT.co.uk during 2015 – this is the right time to invest in an industry leading online presence for our two flagship brands,” said Makin. “We will continue to further develop our mix of solutions for advertisers, whether it be programmatic and direct, display or native content.
Last year IBT signed a partnership agreement with MOAT, to track and boost its advertising viewability – working with MOAT IBT designed, tested, and incorporated its new “sticky ads” technology into its redesigns, offering viewability scores in excess of 70 per cent.
IBT UK says it has further plans to double its video offering output later this year, and has enhanced the website by moving its video player higher up the page and integrating more video in articles, fuelling growth from its current base of around 60 million pre-roll impressions monthly.
Video, which has been trialled on Newsweek over the last couple of months, will become an important part of its editorial and commercial offering over the coming year as it produces both breaking news videos and in-house exclusive packages. IBT.co.uk plans to increase its video output and launch mobile video on IBT.co.uk during first quarter 2016.
Further enhancements are planned through IBT’s membership of the AMP programme, driven by Google. AMP is designed to make the mobile web as fast as mobile apps. Mobile accounts for nearly 50% of IBT.co.uk’s global traffic and is a crucial part of IBT’s strategy for 2016, says the company.
