Starting at 2 p.m. June 24, the Valley Post Web site will feature a new, cleaner design that will make possible quicker user scans of important headlines, photographs, advertisements and video clips, stated Gary Andresen, Online Sales Manager for the Record Searchlight.
The Valley Post and Record Searchlight are sister publications owned by The E.W. Scripps Company, Inc. While the two newspapers operate their news departments independently yet cooperatively, in some areas such as advertising and information technologies, the two businesses share mutual resources, General Manager Bill Dawson explained.
"Following a long study done by corporate on how people use Web sites, it was found that most people like to quickly scan a page to find what they want," Andresen explained as one reason for the Web site redesign.
Additionally, since Scripps owns and operates daily and community newspapers in 14 markets including the Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn., the Ventura County (California) Star, the Kitsap Sun in Bremerton, Wash., and the Abilene (Texas) Reporter-News, one recently stated goal of the company is to have all of its news organizations share similar designs and functionality on their Web sites.
As newspapers shift from a print publishing-only platform to the dual platform of Web-based 24/7 distribution in addition to a print product, more and more attention is being paid to the Web side of the business, Andresen said.
For example, the Valley Post's Web site recently logged its millionth page view since going online in mid-December 2006, according to Omniture, the company that tracks our Web site traffic.
Our site has received at least 40,000 page views each month since June 2008. More recently, the site experienced better than 50,000 page views in March, April and May. An almost astounding 70,000 page views are forecast for June if current daily page view trends hold through the remainder of this month.
This is good news for our Web site advertisers who are reaping the benefits of having so many eyes noticing their messages.
The redesign will not only add more spaces for those advertisers, but will also aid in quicker navigation of the site.
Some customization of the site will also enable users to reconfigure the main categories of news and features to better fit their personal needs, Andresen said.
"It will also be easier to make comments on stories, link to photographs, photo galleries, download videos and access related stories," Andresen said.
A new video server allows for quicker downloads of video content as well as uninterrupted showings of those videos, thus making this feature more attractive than ever for both the news side of our business as well as the advertising side, he added.
Try out the new and improved Web site and let us know what you think.
Scripps Interactive Newspapers Group
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