Daily Express Overhauls Website
The Daily Express and its Sunday counterpart have overhauled their websites to make greater use of web 2.0 and community features.
The new site was soft launched yesterday, with the Daily Star set to follow suit with its own major refit later in the year.
“We have a loyal online readership and, while we’ve worked hard to improve the existing Daily Express website, it needed to evolve,” Geoff Marsh, Express online editor, told Journalism.co.uk.
The new site will now have a dedicated online team of reporters and provide breaking news 24-hours a day, although Marsh said its aim was still to “complement” the newspaper rather than replace it.
All sections for the paper will now be available online, alongside unique content and an archive which allows readers to search past stories and the community areas of the site.
The Desmond-owned publication has also introduced a string of blogs from its Sunday and Daily journalists.
The paper is aiming to get it readership even more involved with introduction of the MYExpress facility that enables users to have their own space on the site.
This area can be to personalised by filtering some content, such as weather and horoscopes, and uploading pictures. It will also be possible for users to browse through other users’ profiles.
Video and podcasts would be added to the mix in the coming weeks once the initial launch was completed.
“I think too many newspaper people are trying to re-invent the wheel. We only want to use video where it genuinely adds something. It’s easy to get carried away by the ability to put videos on a website and go berserk, as some other media groups have done,”said Marsh.
“If we have a video that people will genuinely want to watch, we’ll use it. But we’re not doing it for the sake of it. With a few notable exceptions, newspaper websites have not handled video content well.”
The most recent ABC figures revealed that the Daily Express dropped 8% from its circulation year on year for February, down just over 66,000 copies to leave its circulation at 761,637.
In February 2003, the paper’s publisher reported that its website had 30,000 unique users, with that figure rising to 288,000 last August.
The Sunday Express also saw its circulation decline year on year for February, down 5.4% or more than 46,500 issues, to leave its total at 816,351. However, it reports less of a consistent downturn than its Daily stable-mate.
Daily Express: www.express.co.uk