Portfolio
Gulf Coast Business Review
Problem
Gulf Coast Business Review Publisher, Matt Walsh, was not happy with the way the site for his newspaper looked. A few years back he wanted to hurry and get something online to compliment the print product and commissioned a quick design and the development of a system to upload articles and photos and legal notices right from the newspaper. But as the years passed, the media landscape changed a bit in Sarasota, everywhere really and Matt realized that using his “web site” as just a compliment for the print operation was not the future of Gulf Coast Business Review. Matt and his team were also tiring of paying monthly hosting fees in addition to having to pay hourly if they wanted to change something on the site.
The first step towards changing things was acknowledging that the web was its own medium with its own audience and opportunities. Matt appointed Tim Epperson as Online Editor to run the Review.net site and be the liaison between the print and web. The next step would be to change the look and the system for updating the content on the site.
Process
Having worked with the Observer Group over the last few years, we were happy to help transition Gulf Coast Business Review from a newspaper with a web site to a newspaper AND a web site. The first observation we made of the prior design was that it did not reflect the personality of the business community of the Gulf Coast of Florida, the exact audience we would need to engage. Instead, the old Review.net looked dated and lacked the slick, high-end, organized look and feel that is not only more consistent with what you see when you walk into the GCBR offices, but also what its audience is used to.
We started the process by meeting with GCBR staff to get a better understanding of their audience and to work out a plan for what they wanted to be online, which also included discussing how they were going to make money online. These discussions raised many questions and really set the table for many of the decisions that were made in the project.
Right away, Matt decided he wanted an aggressive advertising strategy, and in hiring Mike Blinder, who’s one of the best at getting result for newspaper clients, Matt instantly had a better trained ad staff, an advertising inventory and a system in place to fill it. Knowing the required ad positions, we set out with some initial designs and went through some revisions to be able to accommodate the new and improved information architecture. One of the things Matt wanted to avoid was a web site that had way too much going on, where it was hard to find things. We created a simple visual hierarchy with a space for the main story, top headlines and then an index of sorts for other stories within the site.
Down the right hand column are the community features for press releases, events and special supplements that GCBR will occasionally feature.
To avoid having to contact a hosting provider every time a change was necessary on the site, we implemented the GCBR into a simple, easy-to-use content management system powered by Expression Engine. This would give the team at GCBR more flexibility and control over what they wanted on their site, making edits, adding new pages and doing it on their own time for no additional cost.
The results are a site where the information is easy to find, where the design reflects the very audience it’s serving and where anything can be added or changed by GCBR from any web browser.