New Sunday Times, Times site goes live

All over the world, observers always question the logic of a company to replace a new product by an old one, and in this case competitors and users will wonder what makes the difference between the two websites. Especially since the site was last relaunched on 4 June 2007 and its multimedia portal revamped in May 2008.

Elan Lohmann, Avusa Media's new online GM and Colin Daniels' replacement , told Bizcommunity.com on the weekend: “For a start the brand position was a factor but on the whole the old site served its purpose and was limited in many ways - on a product and commercial level.

“The other major catalyst was the implementation of a new content management system backend, which was the core component of the project. The new system will make publication of content faster, more manageable and enable a smoother roll-out of standardisation across the group's newspaper websites.”

Collaboration

Apart from offering advertisers 300x600 placements - allegedly the most effective format in the market - the new site also provides a breaking news service, enhanced blog sections and gives sport separate subsections for its various categories. The Times Mobile site has also been rebranded, but retains its award-winning layout and design. The website design was a collaboration between an in-house design team and internationally renowned web design consultants Roger Black Studios. The design process also incorporated key findings from audience research and insights projects conducted on the site.

Times live is built on the Escenic web content management system, used by other major international publications including The Telegraph, Aftonbladet, The Schibsted group and The Sun. It is supposed to enable better editorial management of the site; allow for better content integration, referencing and archiving; and facilitating the integration of the print and online content on the website, a further step in the newsroom convergence at The Times.

Leveraged

Lohmann also said that brands such as Careerjunction, Nu-Metro, Gallo Music, I-Net Bridge and Exclusive Books will be "leveraged to their full potential."

“The new site will be used as a vehicle to push traffic to the rest of the group in an interactive manner, including booking Nu Metro tickets alongside the movie trailers.”

“The strength of Sunday Times, The Times and Times Live is the tradition of quality journalism in the group over the past 100 years - and once we can leverage the power of the journalists the company has at its disposal, we believe we can have a strong competitive edge in the market,” Lohmann pointed out.

However, Lohmann cautioned, “With a launch there are always gremlins and glitches and you never get everything 100% right first time. Regular users also hate change so initially there is an inevitable backlash from the most vocal, which is understandable when you effectively redecorate someone's home without their direct consultation.

“The trick is to respond quickly with enhancements that address key user issues. The launch is never an end, it heralds a new beginning. But we are confident that the new site offers a great foundation to meet our strategic objectives which are in the pipeline.”

"Excited"

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Lohmann lauded his entire team for doing what he called a commendable job under pressure. “The team is excited. There is work to be done before we are where I would like us to be. But I see the new brand as a short-term vision statement to this end. We look forward to many enhancements in the new future.

“From a base of just over 240 000 unique users in September 2007, our audience has grown 180% to 691 571 unique users, according to July's Nielsen Market Intelligence results. We're currently SA's third biggest news site and our next milestone is to surpass 1 million unique monthly users. With our new look site, a stand-alone digital brand and a world-class web publishing platform; we feel this is firmly within our grasp,” concluded Lohmann.

Other Avusa titles will roll out on the content management system soon, signalling the intent of the group to continue to invest and innovate in the digital space. Existing digital businesses of I-Net Bridge, Career Junction and MapIT contributed 23% of the Avusa Group's 2009 EBIT (earnings before interest and tax). Further steps to monetise its digital properties has seen the creation of a dedicated digital sales company, Avusa Media Digital Sales, tasked to grow revenues across the group's digital properties.

The site soft-launched late on Friday afternoon, 11 September, and officially launched this morning, Monday 14 September.

Go to www.timeslive.co.za to view the new site and http://m.timeslive.co.za to view the mobi site. The breaking news feed on Twitter is @timeslivenews. Times Live replaces the existing web domain of www.thetimes.co.za.

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