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The Baltimore Times is launching a new website with a completely redesigned homepage, new features, and functionality to improve the user experience. The new Baltimore Times site will feature exact, straightforward content that allows readers to find the content they seek quickly. It contains easy to use navigation tools and videos, enhancing the user experience.
The current website contains more than seven years of news and information, but the new home will allow the Baltimore Times to archive those and other stories in a location users should find easier. Visitors to the website are encouraged to provide their comments and thoughts, which The Baltimore Times plans to use to help shape additional improvements.
“We did a soft launch two or three weeks ago because it’s important that our readers know that this is an opportunity for them to opine,” said Karen Clay of Clay Consultanting, LLC, who is the website developer responsible for the redesign. “One standout of the new website is the mega-menu, where we’ve redesigned the menu and organized it to make it easier for people to find categories”Advertisers should also find the new site more attractive and conducive to their needs, according to Clay.
“[Baltimore Times Publisher] Joy Bramble and the team looked at ways to cater to our readers and local small businesses,” Clay added. “The paper is free to our readership, but people have to get paid, so there are more advertising opportunities, and we believe we found a sweet spot in that we see a way to increase advertising to increase revenue, but not where it’s obnoxious.”
Clay determined that many news sites that run many ads that force slow downloads of news articles are a turn off to readers. That won’t happen on the Baltimore Times new website, despite an expected increase in advertising, Clay said. Another benefit of the new site is how timely The Baltimore Times can post news articles, said Dena Wane, the director of special projects.
“We don’t always have our webmaster at our right hand, so we will be able to upload things in-house,” Wane said. There’s so much fresh news, so that will help, we are looking forward to this, and we are hoping that our loyal readers and visitors will continue with the tradition of sending their comments about what they like and dislike.” Bramble, who founded The Baltimore Times with her husband, The Rev. Peter Bramble, in 1986, says her goal remains to provide the best product and most useful web-experience for readers. “Karen Clay and Dena Wane and the team have done such a great job, and I’m grateful for their hard work and dedication,” said Bramble, who also publishes The Annapolis Times.
“What is so amazing about The Baltimore Times is that it was literally started with nothing,” David Bramble, The Rev. Peter, and Joy’s son, said in a previous interview. “Not just no money, but no experience, no special relationships, no rich uncle to back you up when there was trouble, no parents to provide money, no friends with great advice— just a bold idea, self-confidence and an unbelievable worth ethic that carries with my mother till this day.”
Please visit our Beta site at https://www. newbtimes.wpengine.com and complete the survey to let us know what you think about our upcoming new site. We appreciate your opinion.
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