As it lays off another 75 staff and faces questions over CEO Sly Bailey’s salary, Trinity Mirror’s Mirror Group Newspapers is relaunching its Mirror.co.uk website on Wednesday with a stripped-back new look that accentuates the newspaper’s brand and core content.
In this video for paidContent, digital publisher Matt Kelly, digital MD Chris Ellis and digital product director Malcolm Coles discuss the impetus behind the relaunch…
http://www.youtube.com/v/f3-mCLDareQ?version=3&hl=en_US
The new site will employ content recommendations from Rummble Labs, automatic content tagging from OpenText, Facebook accounts for reader login, and was redesigned by &&&.
The Mirror’s separate celebrity gossip site 3am.co.uk – previously so distinct from the rest of Mirror.co.uk – is gaining the Mirror masthead for the first time and, Kelly tells paidContent, last week hired new staff despite layoffs elsewhere in the company. The separate MirrorFootball site is not yet getting the refresh.
In December 2011, Mirror.co.uk’s daily average user count rose 44 percent from the previous year to 726,653, but fell 4.2 percent from November. All national news sites pulled fewer December readers than in November except Independent.co.uk, which surpassed Mirror Group thanks to growth following its own redesign.
The Mirror’s red-top rival The Sun has not had a web refresh in some years, with publisher News International seemingly stopping to take a breath amid its ongoing crisis and reports it will launch a Sunday edition.
