South Australians have been the first in Australia to experience the new look coming to News Corp Australia’s state-based mastheads as The Advertiser’s new website went live on Thursday.
News Corp Australia’s state-based mastheads, The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun and The Courier-Mail will soon follow with websites rebuilt from the ground up to be faster, smarter, less congested and much more user-friendly.
For the past year, the team immersed itself in the lives of consumers’ digital habits to find out what they want from their news websites and mobile sites.
Part of The Advertiser’s digital team: from left to right, digital editor Michael Owen-Brown, deputy digital editor Kara Jung, executive editor Rod Savage, premium content editor Greg Barila and audience development editor Veathika Jain. Picture: Matt Turner/News Corp
News Corp Australia executive chairman Michael Miller said the move capped off a year of transformation for the company, which has seen digital subscriptions grow 26 percent, and marked the first stage in a major program of work.
“We’ve reshaped our operations to better meet the needs of audiences and clients to grow subscriber numbers and simplify our structures to be less complex for advertisers to leverage – and now we’re increasing our investment in digital innovation.
“Today’s announcement marks a significant step to realising this digital future and we’ll be increasingly providing audiences and clients with a seamless experience across devices with content available offline and unique content for our valued subscribers.
“This is the first stage in our transition to a digital future.”
News Corp Australia’s chief technology officer Julian Delany said the dramatic rise in consumer expectations around digital products in recent years had prompted a rethink in what News offers audiences.
“We’ve spoken to readers around the nation to listen to their views and hear directly what they want and expect from a digital news product,” he said.
“This extensive customer research has guided the new digital experiences we’ve unveiled this week. And this is just the beginning of our digital evolution.
“More world class functions and experiences will be rolled out in the weeks and months ahead as we commit to continuously improve the reader experience.”
Delany said audiences were clear in what they wanted.
“They asked for speed and we’ve delivered, by building one of the quickest-to-load news sites of any publisher, anywhere.
“They asked to be able to find what they’re looking for more easily, which we’ve delivered by presenting a design that is clean and simple plus an intuitive navigation system that means users are only ever one click away from their area of interest.”
