The Irish Times website ireland.com has been relaunched and its breaking-news service made freely available.
The new-look site, which went live yesterday, has a considerably bolder, cleaner and more contemporary design and will allow ireland.com to better showcase its editorial content and services.
Improved technology also means there will be a clearer division between the free content and the subscriber-only areas of the site. Non-subscribers will be able to read the introductions to the articles in the daily newspaper, but the majority of The Irish Times content and its archive will remain exclusively available to subscribers to the website.
Features introduced as part of the relaunch include web television news and live market data. The ireland.com television service will feature breaking world news and will be available from the homepage and the breaking-news area of the site.
Making ireland.com's breaking-news service accessible to all readers will significantly widen the reach of the website's editorial content. It is aimed also at boosting non-subscriber readership to take advantage of the online advertising market.
Although online advertising has grown significantly in the US and across the EU in recent years, the pace in Ireland has been considerably slower. This is largely attributable to the slow roll-out and take-up of broadband.
Just one per cent of advertising revenue currently finds its way to online businesses.
Industry analysts are predicting significant growth in the online display advertising market in Ireland over the next two years. And although ireland.com is already among the busiest websites in the State with monthly page impressions of close to 16 million, it is hoped to drive more traffic into it.
"With good industry growth expectations, we expect advertising revenues for ireland.com to grow healthily on the back of the developing online display and classified markets," said ireland.com general manager Una O'Hare. She said The Irish Times group's "recent expansion of its online portfolio" including the acquisition of property portal myhome.ie presented ireland.com "with great short-term and strategic opportunities".
The redesigned site will also include the newspaper's revamped classified services in the coming weeks. The subscription model was introduced by ireland.com in 2002 to increase the value placed on its online content and to ensure that the company was not solely dependent on advertising revenue.
Premium content remains the company's largest revenue stream and there are more than 55,000 users who access premium content, mobile services and e-mail packages on the website.
"We wish to engage a wider audience while continuing to deliver a top quality product to our subscribers," said Ms O'Hare. "Subscribers pay from approximately €1.50 a week to access The Irish Times and an article archive stretching back over 10 years which represents exceptional value."
What's new. . . .
Free breaking news: The website's comprehensive breaking news service, which has only been available to premium content subscribers in recent years, is now freely available to all users.
Web TV: ireland.com TV offers users a selection of world and entertainment news daily.
Archive calendar: An enhanced archive service allows users to navigate through back issues with greater ease.
Abstracts of premium articles: The introductory paragraphs of all articles are now accessible to all users of the website.
Live market data: Regularly updated financial information from the Irish Stock Exchange is accompanied by live closing prices from the world's major bourses.
