Editorial
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – After first launching over two years ago, last Saturday night we released our new site design, a “redesign” as they call it in the Internet Marketing world. We wanted to keep the same general look, and continue with our “Brand” as well as the Sections in which we are organized. Really we just needed to stay current, using some better tools to make it easier for Readers to access more news articles, and improve our Advertising options.
The project started about a month ago and we did our best to make the transition smooth. The site was “down” – unavailable, for a few hours Saturday evening while we made the final switch. Sunday morning we made an announcement to our email list.
The biggest and most visible change is a photo “slider” in our main hero area to better display our Front Page articles for the current and recent issues. We also moved our Nightlife Guide to the forefront, running teasers down the left column for easier access of each day’s listing.
The layout has new Advertising placements as well, and instead of the four “Small Box” placements we now have one “Masthead” banner running along the top next to our logo. We also replaced the “Skyscraper” format for a standard “Top Box”, and the “Lower Box” is similar to what we had before (just slightly larger).
Something new for Advertisers is in the inner pages we have a new “Footer Banner”, which is our smallest and least expensive placement. Although I’ll point out that all our prices have been reduced now because of the new placements and almost 50 percent Online Readership growth since October.
Another visible change is moving our Photo Gallery to the bottom of the page, and increasing the size of each thumbnail. The photos have been an important part of our design, but the placement needed to be adjusted to make way for more news. Also the Weather Widget has been moved to the lower right, but now includes more information, and a four-day forecast.
We want to thank all our Readers and Advertisers for the support, helping us grow and improve our news publishing business. It had been over two years in our initial site design layout, and although we made some minor improvements along the way, it was time for a more substantial step forward. The Print edition layout will stay the same for the foreseeable future, although look for some minor updates in the next issue for Advertisers.
