NewsworthyThe Charlotte Observer

With a cluttered site that prevented coherent navigation, the Charlotte Observer needed a redesign to restructure news articles, augment the flow of information, and to distinguish the newspaper as its own brand entity within the market.

Awards

Winner of the Web Marketing Association's Best Newspaper Website of 2009

The Challenge

Editorial design on the web presents one of the biggest challenges for newspapers today. When the Charlotte Observer approached NavigationArts, they were dealing with a clunky, difficult-to-navigate site, with little appeal to the increasing numbers of digital-only consumers.

The Solution

The goal of the website redesign was to reflect the the Observer's physical quality in a digital setting while specifically focusing on information around the Charlotte community.

Project Results Included:

• Separating the Observer's multiple reader lanes - which at the outset included a combination newspaper website and vacation/destination portal - by changing the URL from www.charlotte.com to www.charlotteobserver.com
• Restructuring the homepage from a sea of links to a system of navigation content prioritization with top and sub navigation
• Clarifying the homepage by limiting it to a fixed number of stories
• Focusing on multimedia content with the design of an elegant widget to showcase video clips and pictures
• Enabling user-generated content capabilities to connect the Observer's community of readers
• Dynamic jQuery-enabled (JavaScript) front-end with slide shows, tabbed controls, and other modern widgets
• Implementing a CSS-based layout

The Client

The Charlotte Observer is an award-winning newspaper based in Charlotte, North Carolina and owned by the McClatchy Company. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in North Carolina and South Carolina.