Re-defining The Way You Consume News Online
Emote Digital is pleased to have been involved in the newly launched re-design of InternetRetailing.com.au, an independent publishing website dedicated to the Australian online retail industry. The website was founded by Mark Freidin and Nathan Huppatz in 2008 and since then has build a steady readership that are interested in the latest online retail news, in-depth articles and case studies.
Throughout the re-design Emote Digital had one main goal: To make the content the primary focus. This is why their loyal readers keep coming back and we wanted to make it the best experience for them. Many news-styled websites have too many layers of navigation, busy sidebars, and their homepages are notorious for displaying so much content that the reader doesn’t know where to look. Emote digital worked to strip back the all the visual clutter, and allow the readers to focus on the content.
Engaging readers, and then keeping them engaged, is the greatest challenge of many websites. Related content links are a great way to keep users interacting with your website but many websites implement them poorly. The standard “solution” is to cram the sidebar with as many links as possible. This can be very inefficient for two reasons. The first one is that it can distract the user, making it harder to concentrate on the article they are trying to read, or secondly the related articles can fall victim to “Banner blindness”. This phenomenon is where the users will consciously or sub-consciously ignore elements that look like a banner. We tackled this challenge by removing the side bar completely on the article page, and presenting the user with related articles once they had finished reading. In addition to this, we implemented continuous reading, meaning once the reader had scrolled to the bottom of the article; the next article is automatically loaded. This means the user is guided through related content without the need to navigate back and forward between articles, or additional clicks. This is a much more enticing way to read more articles and is actual more natural to how you would traditionally read in a newspaper or magazine.
Head over to InternetRetailing.com.au and try it out yourself.