Publishing house Reed Business Information (RBI) is to overhaul the
site for its consumer magazine New Scientist (www.newscientist.com).
The new-look site, which is being redesigned by an in-house team, will
include a daily news feed, but will lose much of its magazine
content.
A dedicated online editorial team has been recruited for the launch, who
will work alongside the existing New Scientist journalists to create
specific content for the site.
'The strategy is to distance the site from the print magazine and to
produce a site that users go to for up-to-the-minute news on scientific
issues,' said Tracy Hicks, web marketing manager at RBI. The print
magazine currently reaches a global audience of 650,000 readers.
The site has been live since 1995, but this is its first overhaul since
1997, when the company changed the site to Planet Science, a decision
that was reversed shortly afterwards when it reverted to the New
Scientist brand.
'Until now, the site has simply been an online version of the
magazine.
The new site will not include features any more and will focus on news,
but with New Scientist's individual take on things,' said Hicks.
The existing weekly newsletter is expected to become daily, but there
are no immediate plans for this. 'We will wait and see what happens as
some people don't like to have an email in their inbox every day,' said
Hicks.
'We currently have five million page impressions a month, and hope that
the new site will encourage users to visit the site on a daily basis to
get the latest news,' she added.
↧