Posted by: John A. Byrne on July 01
This item was written by BusinessWeek's user engagement intern, Greg Spielberg.
A big congratulations to BusinessWeek reader Alton Drew. This past Monday – June 22 – Drew joined economics professor Peter Morici on CNBC Reports to discuss President Obama’s proposal to increase regulation of industrial lending companies. Drew says a CNBC producer contacted him after she read his Feb. 18 MyTake guest column for us, “Banks ‘Too Big to Fail’? Wrong.” His opinion piece landed Alton atop our most-read story list in mid-February and, it turns out, on national television. Drew, an Atlanta-based law professor and policy analyst, hasn’t wavered in his critique of government intervention – whether it be winter bailouts or summer regulation.
Alton’s journey from our Debate Room to the CNBC green room exemplifies what I like to call “the mobile comment.” At BusinessWeek.com, we don’t expect comments to be two-dimensional, sedentary objects. They get batted around or propelled by other commenters, promoted through In Your Face and sourced as inspiration for our reporters' stories. Our reader comments have a long tail, and in the case of Drew, one that caught the attention of Debate Room editor Rebecca Reisner (who asked him if he'd be interested in writing a MyTake for us), our readers (who catapulted his story to most-read pole position) and CNBC’s producer, who invited him on the show.
For an opportunity to get your own mobile comment started, check out our Case for Optimism blog. We are building a reader slide show that highlights well-supported signs of economic optimism, and the six most compelling observations or insights will make it into BusinessWeek’s August double issue. You can also share any "uncommon indicators" of an economic turnaround you spot in your business or community by tweeting us by using the #bizoptimism hashtag on Twitter.
Posted by: John A. Byrne on June 25
Today we debut a newly redesigned home page, the first in a series of major improvements to BusinessWeek.com that will roll out over the next few months. A full year in the making, our new look represents a massive effort to increase our usefulness to you, to make our site more vibrant and more focused on need-to-know breaking business news. We think this next generation home page makes for a fresher, more dynamic, more modern and less-cluttered appearance.
What hasn't changed is as important as what has: our commitment to the highest standards of journalism and our goal to create a site with the deepest and most meaningful engagement of its readers. We remain devoted to thorough reporting, analytical thinking, superb writing, and seriousness of purpose. Our journalism is fair and dispassionate, based on expertise and insight as well as access to business thought leaders and newsmakers. And we maintain our focus on improving the craft of journalism by both engaging and collaborating with our readers. To us, that last thought is far more than words on a computer screen. It's our purpose and our promise.
We started on this journey a year ago from a position of great strength, with the largest audience in our history. Today BusinessWeek.com has more than 50 million monthly page views and some 10 million unique visitors worldwide, up 24 percent in 2008. Our reader engagement index has shown a 31 percent increase in the past year, with a 50 percent rise in reader perspectives on stories and a 43 percent increase in reader insights on our blogs.
When deputy creative director David Sleight wrote the creative brief for this project in July of 2008, he noted the following objectives: To increase repeat visits to the homepage, to drive more traffic from the homepage to the rest of the site via improved navigation, to clearly communicate BusinessWeek.com offerings and special features through intelligent use of navigation and page layout, and to focus the homepage offering on our core audience of global business professionals and their destination mindset.
David worked with the New York-based design firm Behavior to meet these goals. Their ideas were informed by market research, focus groups, passionate discussion, and the collective gut of many stakeholders. The result is a design we think you'll like and enjoy.
Here's what is new and improved:
• Increased news and analysis on the most important breaking stories of the day in business. We hope this new emphasis on providing analysis and insight on the crucial up-to-the-minute stories will encourage you to come back to our site throughout the day.
• Expanded coverage of the stock markets around the world with more detailed data on the companies that are making news in the U.S., Europe and Asia.
• A Business Exchange window to see what our users are reading and how they're reacting to stories on more than 1,500 topics, from commercial space travel to Starbucks, from around the web.
• A video player to highlight the vast amount of video storytelling, commentary and interviews we do on a daily basis.
• A feature strip (we call it the belly band in-house, because it rests toward the middle of the home page) to promote our blogs, special reports, stock snapshots, multimedia, and reader engagement initiatives.
• A refined navigation bar at the top of the page that focuses on core business coverage from finance to management, more quickly allowing you to get to the information you want and need.
There's more to come in the following weeks. Within the next month, we'll launch two new mobile apps, one for the iPhone and another for the BlackBerry. By early fall, we'll have redesigned all our channel homepages for our core coverage, from technology to small business. And by year-end, we expect to debut new story pages with better user engagement and collaboration features. (Please post a comment and let us know what you'd like to see on that front.)
We hope you agree with us that these changes will vastly improve the user experience—your experience—on BusinessWeek.com and we look forward to your feedback here.
Enjoy!
Posted by: John A. Byrne on June 19
"Trust is integral to every transaction and the foundation for business success. It drives the volume, velocity and value of every business transaction." BusinessWeek reader Alex Todd, the founder and CEO of Trust Enablement Strategies, wrote that mission statement for his firm. The Toronto-based management consultant also pitched us on a story idea related to his mantra. The result -- "How Can Companies Win Back Trust?" -- looks at how the recession and financial crisis have shaken shareholders' faith in corporate boards and management, and what companies can do about it. Read BW reporter Ben Steverman's story and let us know what you think in the comments. And thanks to Alex for taking time to suggest we look at how companies can take steps to regain the faith of their investors.
Posted by: John A. Byrne on June 19
BusinessWeek reader T.S. Aditya Raghav is preparing to begin MBA studies at IESE in Spain this fall. Naturally, given the economy, he's a bit nervous. So he posted a suggestion on this blog asking that a BusinessWeek reporter look back to the last recession to see how MBA grads fared in that downturn.
Geoff Gloeckler, a reporter on our b-schools team, took up the assignment. The result -- "MBA Tales: Searching for Work in a Recession" -- looks at the job-hunting experiences of five MBA grads who graduated in a time of economic upheaval.
We appreciate yet another smart idea from one of our valued readers. Read the story to find out how an earlier group of MBA grads navigated a slumping economy, and post your own insights and advice to today's jittery MBA students in the comments.
Posted by: John A. Byrne on June 18
Our latest reader-suggested story looks at Wal-Mart’s entry into the retail-clinic business. BusinessWeek reader David O’Reilly (@IntelliMedBlog on Twitter) recommended we look into how the big-box retailer is revolutionizing health care, but what writer Greg Spielberg found is that Wal-Mart is struggling somewhat in its effort to capture a slice of the growing retail-clinic industry. While Wal-Mart had planned on opening 400 in-store clinics by the end of this year, it has seen mixed success, and the present count is 31 in nine states. CVS and Walgreens, on the other hand, are increasing their market share in a business that’s drawing increased attention nationwide. Thanks to David for suggesting and Greg for reporting a great story, which was our top story on BusinessWeek.com today and also our most-read and most-commented.
