The latest in astronomy news, fueled by a flexible WordPress system.
SpaceNews
SpaceNews recently celebrated their 25th year as a leader in space publications. Previously a print magazine, the industry leader is moving into the future with a powerful digital presence via WDG’s WordPress expertise.
Project Mission
Originally a print magazine, SpaceNews sought to completely revamp their website to improve the user experience while also increasing revenue through responsive advertisements and content sponsorship.
What We Did
SpaceNews partnered with WDG for a premier digital experience that would intuitively showcase their extensive body of work on a flexible WordPress content management system.
Ensuring Mass Content Migration
WDG strategists began by using publication analytics to revamp and reorganize the site’s taxonomy structure, remapping the existing content to be displayed in a more intuitive manner. This map was used during migration to match the new taxonomy terms to content using a combination of keywords and previous terms. We also included content tagging and content feeds capabilities. Importantly, WDG developers expertly migrated ten years of SpaceNews’ archived content, ensuring that information was merged successfully without any loss in the integrity of article content.
increase in page views
Propelling Publishing into the Future
Another significant element of the project was giving SpaceNews’ editors a simplified method for creating, curating, and publishing content. Using custom templates on the WordPress CMS, WDG designers ensured Spacenews editors the functionality to write and organize related articles to portray a connected story-arc. We also featured author pages to highlight the strength of the editorial team. To help writers and editors stay on top of the latest industry news, we also created a post-by-email feature to ensure easy content workflow due to the high speed nature of the industry.
Developing an Industry Resource
WDG strategists wanted to highlight SpaceNews’ value as an industry resource, creating a Wikipedia-like function for developing informational pages about relevant topics, industry figures, and important companies. To redirect users towards related content and keep them engaged in the site, these pages also offer background information about relevant terms and are connected to other articles.
18 custom landing pages
As a online news publication, SpaceNews’ updated website needed to cater directly to its specific niche of readers, providing in-depth coverage of the latest in the business and politics of space. To achieve this, we focused on the tablet reading experience as the baseline for other screen sizes. By creating a mobile responsive design that fit with all three breakpoints, SpaceNews was able to more seamlessly integrate revenue generating ads. This also eliminated any potential disturbances in the overall design, regardless of reading experience.
Creating Leaps in User Engagement
With a new site structure and improved publication workflow, SpaceNews has experienced a dramatic increase in user engagement. Site visits have increased over 76%, with 64% more user sessions and 44% more page views. This has resulted in almost a million page views per month.
WDG is helping move SpaceNews into the future of the publishing industry.