TORONTO – Visitors to the CBC’s popular web source, www.cbc.ca, over the past few days will have noticed a dramatic overhaul of the service.
Celebrating its 10th anniversary, the public broadcaster’s site was due for re-design and this one began over a year ago, with a survey of more than 5,000 audience members, asking what people liked and disliked about the web site. The results of that survey, combined with the feedback CBC.ca gets daily through e-mail, phone calls and online forms, formed the basis of the redesign project, says a press release.
Since there is a large appetite for international news, CBC.ca has launched a new World section to showcase all of its international material – news, analysis and commentary, and special features.
CBC.ca has also launched a new Canada section that brings together the top news headlines from its 12 local sections, plus all other Canadian news material.
The home page has been reorganized and cleaned up, and a directory of frequently-asked-for links has been added. For example, the Radio Frequency Guide is now on the home page.
The site has also launched a video page that gathers in one spot hundreds of news and entertainment TV clips from CBC.
As well, all delivery services have been collected together in the left navigation, offering one-stop access to podcasts, RSS feeds, breaking news alerts, and other news by e-mail.
“We started with a 147-page document of audience feedback,” said Sue Gardner, senior director of CBC.ca. “From there, you look for themes and you aim to balance everybody’s needs and desires in a way that works for the maximum possible number of people. Based on the initial positive feedback we’ve gotten, I’d say we’ve succeeded.”
Since December, CBC.ca has been the news/media site most-used by Canadians, beating out all its news/media colleagues, including the Globe and Mail, CTV, the New York Times, BBC and CNN, says the press release, quoting data from ComScore Media Metrix. Over the past month, CBC.ca has won two awards: a Canadian New Media Award for excellence in news and information, for coverage of the Torino Olympics, and a FOCAL International Award for best use of footage in New Media, for the CBC/SRC Digital Archives project.
On July 3, 2006, CBC.ca celebrates its 10th anniversary. Celebrations will take place throughout June and July, including online at www.cbc.ca/10th.
Since its inception in 1996, CBC.ca has won dozens of awards from associations, including the Webby Awards, the Prix Italia competition, the Online News Association, Editor & Publisher magazine, the Canadian New Media Association, the New York Festival, the Radio-Television News Directors Association, the Michener Awards Foundation, VidFest and Flash In The Can. On May 29, CBC.ca won the CNMA award for excellence in news and information for its coverage of the 2006 Torino Olympics. And on May 15, CBC.ca won the 2006 FOCAL International Award for best use of footage in New Media, for its Digital Archives project.
CBC.ca averages over 10 million unique visitors per month, from across Canada and around the world, according to WebTrends data. Between April 2005 and April 2006, according to ComScore data, CBC.ca’s overall traffic increased 58%.
