Video, Design Top Features at BusinessJournalDaily.com

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio —  After nearly four months of designing, testing and redesigning with the help of CYO Marketing and Jet Creative Productions, The Business Journal launched its new website Monday. The most noticeable new features are a completely new layout and improved video functions.

“It’s more visual with more photographs and how stories are displayed. It all flows better. It’s modern-looking and cool,” says Andrea Wood, publisher. “The Daily Buzz webcast is very prominent, which is great because it’s viewed by more than 10,000 people a day and that number continues to grow.”

Working with local startups was an important part of the project, she adds. Both CYO and Jet are based in downtown Youngstown.

“It’s all about downtown, local energy, local brain power and taking advantage of what’s here and realizing the people that are here are as good as the people anywhere,” Wood says.

During the process of working on the digitally remastered website, Dennis Schiraldi, owner of CYO, says one of the most common complaints about the old format of BusinessJournalDaily.com was the quality of the video player. With the new website, that is no longer a problem.

“When people come to the site and go to watch the DailyBUZZ, it should play immediately. There won’t be any buffering issues, any starting and stopping,” says Bill Rusu, a partner with Jet Creative. “The Business Journal has made a big emphasis on great video content for the community. We wanted to make sure people were able to go to the site and play those videos easily.”

Beneath each day’s top stories, more videos will be featured, notes Jet Creative partner Emily Rusu.

“It’s a whole new viewer, so everything’s go to be in one space,” she says. “That’s where you’re going to find Three Minutes With, Drilling Down, Trending Manufacturing and Trending TechBelt.”

The new website layout also focuses heavily on images and visuals to drive readers to stories.

“The first thing you’ll notice is that it’s more image heavy. There are more visuals to it. The headlines have pictures along with them instead of just text,” says Emily Rusu. “Having pictures like this will engage whoever comes to the site. They’ll click on stories more and be more interested than if it were just a text headline.”

With the change, site metrics will be more comprehensive, Wood says, benefiting readers, advertisers and Business Journal writers.

“Website metrics will tell us the stories people like to read, what they find greater interest in and what they don’t find as interesting. That helps us allocate editorial resources,” she says. “The metrics will also tell advertisers how often their ads are viewed.”

In addition to metrics, advertisers will also benefit from the new look, Schiraldi says.

“There’s more space for banner ads and ads down the side that are optimized by Google. You know you’re going to get your target market,” he says.

The remastered website comes on the heels of the launch of a new social media strategy created for The Business Journal by Schiraldi in August. With the plan, the number of visits to BusinessJournalDaily.com rose 20%.

“The great thing about The Business Journal is the reputation. It was exciting to work with The Business Journal because they produce great content on a day-to-day basis,” Schiraldi says.

When the new website is combined with an improved social media presence, including a new Instagram account, those numbers – 100,000 views per month by 60,000 unique visitors – will only continue to increase, Schiraldi believes.

“The performance of the website, the end user experience and the number of people engaging with the website — the statistics are staggering,” he says. “The fact is that when you combine the number of people coming to the website and the people interacting with social media, The Business Journal is reaching half a million people. That’s significant.”

In addition to the extent of engagement with users, Schiraldi also says the redesign is significant, putting The Business Journal on par with some national online publications.

“I think that when look at even a national presence for business publications, it’s comparable to something like Inc.com or VentureBeat,” he says. “It is a world-class design that Jet came up with and that I’m proud to have helped with.”

With the launch of the new website on Monday, Wood says the Business Journal is in a place that, 30 years ago, she couldn’t have imagined.

“When we started the paper, we had no way of knowing that we’d have a small TV studio, that we’d be doing television online or even that we’d have a website,” she says.

“We don’t know how we’re going to be delivering our news in 30 years. But as I always tell our staff, content is king. People will always want local news,” Wood says. “The issue is how do you get it to them in the ways they want to see it. We have to keep innovating, keep reinventing and stay ahead of everyone else.”

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Welcome to Our Digitally Remastered Website

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