The Mirror has unveiled the long-rumoured redesign of its website.
The site design was developed with Cases i Associats, the Spanish design firm that has also redesigned of the Daily Mirror print edition, and aims to have the same design-led approach as the tabloid paper.
Unlike most newspaper websites, the new Mirror home page is designed around modular “building block” sections, a four-column grid at the top of the page. Depending on the stories and images available, Mirror.co.uk journalists can change the shape of the boxes used in the grid to lay out stories without a linear story hierarchy.
Rather than mimic the print edition’s logos, the new Mirror.co.uk uses a font used for headlines in the redesigned Daily Mirror as its logo type. It uses an embedded custom headline font, allowing it to create a distinctive feel without resorting to using images of text, which cannot be read by search engines.
Over the past few months, the Mirror’s online staff has gradually doubled in size to sixteen journalists as the site has broadened its remit from its original focus on news, sport and entertainment.
Trinity Mirror has stressed that the site is designed to encourage ‘trialogue’- communication both between the site’s journalists and their readers as well as using Mirror.co.uk as a platform for the readers to communicate between themselves. To that end, the site has incorporated sections determined by user behaviour, including lists of “top rated” and “most popular” articles.
Further new functionality is expected to be added to the site in the coming months as it continues to evolve.
The Mirror’s website traffic trails behind the other ABCe-audited national newspaper websites.
Mirror Group Digital’s combined figure for all of its national newspaper sites, including Mirror.co.uk, recorded 4.8 million unique users in May, but had a higher proportion of UK users than any of the other audited sites. June’s ABCe figures are due out on Thursday.
The Mirror.co.uk relaunch comes the same week that Telegraph.co.uk unveiled a redesign and Guardian.co.uk continued its redesign process with the introduction of new life and style, education and culture sections.
The Sun Online, meanwhile, made some minor changes to its websites and introduced an Adobe Air-based widget – which can be downloaded to desktops – featuring Page 3 model Keely Hazell, which it says has already been downloaded 10,000 times.
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