The websites for Express & Star and Shropshire Star have been given a “cleaner look” as part of a complete redesign.<\/p>\n
The Midland News Association, publisher of the Express & Star and Shropshire Star, has launched the new sites for its daily titles.<\/p>\n
The platforms have innovative designs and are the first in the UK to be built and powered by the Washington Post’s Arc Publishing, a state-of-the-art digital platform and suite of tools engineered to meet the needs of modern publishers, MNA said.<\/p>\n
By providing defined areas for key content, including local news and sport, as well as giving prominent commercial slots, the designers believe the site has less clutter, making it easier to for people to navigate around and find the content they are looking for.<\/p>\n
The team have also focused on making the sites more mobile friendly to benefit the 62 per cent of MNA web users who visit using a handheld device.<\/p>\n
Andy Hill, managing director of MNA Digital, said: “The navigation of the sites was an important part of the project that received a lot of attention. The objective was to simplify the navigation and make it easier for our readers to find the content that they are interested in.<\/p>\n
“During the project we conducted extensive user research, which showed that our sites were cluttered and confusing to navigate meaning that it could be hard for a reader to find the content they are searching for.<\/p>\n
“Offering our readers too much choice through the navigation was counter-productive. The new navigation is simple to understand and works well on a mobile as it is easy to use on a small screen.<\/p>\n
“This is important because over 60 per cent of our users access our websites using their mobile phones.”<\/p>\n
The MNA is the first UK publisher to use the technology used by the Washington Post. The websites are fed by content directly from Knowledge, the MNA’s content management system (CMS), which is produced by sister company Press Computer Systems.<\/p>\n
Following the launch of the new MNA websites, the Wolverhampton-based MNA Digital team plan to roll out the designs to their sister Claverley titles the Jersey Evening Post and the Guernsey Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The websites for Express & Star and Shropshire Star have been given a “cleaner look” as part of a complete redesign.
\nThe Midland News Association, publisher of the Express & Star and Shropshire Star, has launched the new sites for its daily titles.
\nThe platforms have…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4731,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n