Newspaper & Mailroom
The Washington Post Revamps Mobile Products
Thursday 30. July 2009 - News Readers Get More Intuitive Layout, Engaging Features, Breaking News; Local Users Get Real-Time Weather and Traffic Updates; Regional News and Tools
The Washington Post today unveiled a new mobile site, offering an improved, more intuitive way to receive The Posts award-winning news and analysis on-the-go, in addition to innovative features that will make the mobile site a required destination for readers in Washington and around the country.
The site is now made up of five main sections: politics, business, metro, arts & living and sports, formatted in an easy-to-navigate layout, which will now be managed by two mobile editors dedicated to updating content and managing breaking news alerts on the WAP site.
Users in the Washington, D.C.-area will have access to customized weather, breaking sports scores and key regional news stories. In the very near future, visitors to the site will be able to make a restaurant reservation, buy a movie ticket and conduct other advanced transactions directly from the site as well as receive real-time traffic routes integrating Google maps and GPS.
“The newspaper and Web site have long been core to our business, but we are committed to reaching our audience whenever they want news and information, wherever they are. We know real growth is in mobile and it is a top priority for us, so for the past six months, weve taken dramatic steps to make our new mobile site even more useful, innovative and compelling than ever. Investing in internal resources and technology, we think weve created something that puts us among the leaders in mobile innovation, and we are thrilled to share this with our readers,” said Goli Sheikholeslami, General Manager, Washington Post Digital.
The mobile site is built on a proprietary platform that is entirely new to the company.
“The advantages of building and supporting this in-house are enormous. Were able to experiment like we never have before, and were excited about the possibilities to grow upon what weve already created,” added Sheikholeslami.
Amtrak has signed on as sponsor of the launch. “Mobile has proven to be an important medium for Amtrak, particularly as more consumers are beginning to use Smartphones and other mobile technology to access travel information and planning tools. Working with The Washington Post for the relaunch of its mobile site provides a very timely and unique opportunity to reach Amtrak customers in an innovative and highly relevant way,” said Phuc Truong, US Managing Director of Mobext, the mobile marketing unit of Havas Digital, which created the campaign.