Seeking a more sophisticated look and feel to reflect its brand online, women's lifestyle magazine Cosmopolitan relaunched Cosmopolitan.com on June 18. Roughly two years since its last relaunch, the new site allows visitors to easily navigate to the fresh and relevant content they're interested in -- which is apparently video. According to early returns, video traffic has increased five times since the relaunch of Cosmopolitan.com. That's not the only promising number: In the first five days since the relaunch, the site attracted 471,330 unique visitors and 11.3-million page views, a 46-percent and 33-percent increase compared to four weeks prior, respectively.
John Searles, editorial brand director for Cosmopolitan, spoke with Publishing Executive Inbox about the magazine's new site.
INBOX: What was the reasoning behind the relaunch of Cosmopolitan.com? Were there elements lacking from the previous site that you wanted to incorporate into the relaunched site?
JOHN SEARLES: With any aspect of Cosmo, whether it's the magazine, the radio station or the Web site, we're always remaking the brand to keep it fresh and relevant for our readers and users. We redesign the magazine regularly, abandoning old columns, adding new columns … it's the same with the Web site. We want to keep it as fresh as possible.
The great thing about the Web is that you can study traffic patterns. Kate White, the editor-in-chief [of Cosmopolitan], and I look at them every week, examining what's popular and what's not. By relaunching the site we're able to maximize what our users like best and jettison what they didn't like so much.
We wanted something more sophisticated than what we had previously. That was one thing that we really wanted -- not just a site that was easier to navigate and find content, but also something that had a more sophisticated look and feel to reflect what's going on with the brand as a whole.
INBOX: How frequently is the content updated on the site to reflect the most popular choices?
SEARLES: Every day we're adding new content. Our magazine's edit staff is required to write content for the Web site. We try to write timely things. For example, when John Edwards got caught cheating, we wrote a story on how to spot a cheater and put it up on the Web right away. The magazine works with such a lead time that we don't always have the advantage of being able to capture something when it's happening. That's the great thing about the Web.
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