The recent announced re-design of CNTraveller.com is complete and the site re-launched last week.
The overall site look is understated, with the white and light blue background hues allowing the photography and videos to stand out. Generous leading and font sizes also make for a pleasurable and not ‘over busy’ browsing experience. The CNT team hasn’t forgotten that in travel, pictures do the talking, with large panels used to display attractive hotel and destination photography.
The content of the site is similar to before – destination and activity guides give users tantalising snippets of the contents of the full magazine and there are plenty of references to the ‘offline’ magazine to drive subscriptions.
New interactive features include a blog by CNT’s offline editor, Sarah Miller, and a feed from the magazine’s twitter account. In addition, there’s a readers’ Q&A which, if it takes off, will provide travel companies with an opportunity to promote themselves if they can provide relevant and considered answers to potential travellers’ questions.
The major innnovation is the introduction of a hotel booking engine in association with Travel Intelligence as predicted by Cream in October. This is heavily promoted throughout the site and it’s clear that the new revenue stream opened up by this feature were an important reason behind the re-launch.
For advertisers, the options are now wider with more ‘aspirational’ ad formats available than on the old site. Bigger banners have been introduced, as have double MPUs, double Skys and page sponsorship opportunities (the homepage is currently ‘woodpaneled’ by the Canadian Tourism Commission.)
In all, from a design perspective its a huge improvement on the old site, which was looking rather dated, and from an advertiser’s standpoint it now offers a more aspirational environment with formats that better showcase their premium offerings.
The challenge going forward will be for the CNTraveller.com team to up the pace in the creation of high quality, branded and interactive content to keep their visitors coming back for more.
