The Brief

Bits & Bobs Magazine are a long-running local directory magazine, based in north Essex and distributing to the Colchester, Braintree, Witham, Uttlesford and Halsted areas. Having been a print only publication for many years they made the decision to migrate to online. This was planned as a gradual process, initially a new website would need to be developed and built upon as their migration progressed. The magazine made the majority of it’s income from selling advertising space, but a major part of the magazine that attracts readership is their classified ads section. This allows people to advertise their unwanted items for sale and contact each other to buy items offered. The website needed to reflect the same user experience and if possible improve it.

The Process

Firstly, we needed to understand the magazine, the way the company worked, how they wanted to be perceived and the kind of customer base they wanted to attract. We needed to learn what focus on the site needed to be and discuss the pros and cons of focusing on business or classified ads. Once the focus was agreed, we then had to discuss and design the process of the site, how it would look, how it would be interacted with and the information they needed to collect.

This was then assigned to our design team to put together the suggested look and feel for the new website. This would allow our developers to follow a layout and style that the client had seen and agreed before the build phase. Once the design was confirmed, the website was built, tested and it was ready to go live.

Web Link

The Solution

The client’s unique requirements demanded a number of solutions to cover off the different facets of the business. We built three combined products; a platform website which would allow customers to create their own adverts, inserting information on the item(s) they wanted to sell, add their personal information to the advert for contact details, an asking price and an image. This combined with a client-only back-end system which would allow them to manage those adverts.

The internal system for the client allowed them to add/remove business adverts too. With this being their main source of income, they needed to offer this to their magazine advertisers and start to slowly migrate them across to online only. This internal system gave them total control over the client and customer provided information that went onto the website. The front-end of the website was built on a custom designed and built WordPress system. This gave them a CMS system to make their own changes and edits to the site content.

We were also asked to design some of the company banner adverts for them, showing off some of their biggest clients in a featured advert area on the site homepage. The migration continues step by step with lots of time taken to sit back and assess the progress and site visitor behaviour. Further updates and changes are planned.

Other Work

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Want to Get in Touch?

Here at Razor Edge Media we look in great detail at good and bad ideas all the time. We know which questions need answering and what needs to be considered at each point of the process. We know that the questions we will raise will help refine your thinking, hone your idea and ultimately dictate if it is viable or not.





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