BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news
"After several weeks of intensive coding, writing, picture taking,
polishing and general light buffing, the new and improved www.mbuk.com
is now open," says Mike Davis of MBUK.
"Some of you may be aware of the old site. This new one is, as one
correspondent has said, "A million times better". It looks better, and
it’s easier to navigate. We’re adding news stories and reviews every day
and building a community of readers via our forum, polls, competitions
and reader contributions."
According to Davis, the revamp is merely "phase one", with more interactivity being added later. However, as many other websites have learnt to their cost, if you promise the earth but don’t deliver, it’s incredibly difficult to get people to come back to your site. MBUK will have ramp up the number of house-ads in Future titles and pay for (or barter) banner ads on key supplier sites, if it is to drag readers back in.
The physical MBUK is a monthly barn-stormer; recreating this on a daily basis is possible but expensive. However, if anyone can do it, Future can.
The old site was incredibly badly designed. It looked trendy but any site where you’ve got to click a few times to get to that day’s news is always going to struggle. The new site is cleaner. The black, thankfully, has been ditched (Jeez, why are designers so stupid?) and news takes centre stage. Most features are now accessible from the home page. The site loads fast and there are no bells and whistles until you deliberately go looking for them.
______________________________________________
News and digital images should be sent to the website’s editor mike.davis@futurenet.co.uk or ian.osborne@futurenet.co.uk
Advertising deals can be negotiated with adam.brown@futurenet.co.uk.
