• by Sara Guaglione , May 5, 2016

Engadget underwent a major redesign in December to better reflect a change in the brand’s editorial mission, a shift that had been quietly taking place for the last year and a half.

Engadget was once a tech blog, but the new layout communicates to readers that the publication has changed.

As a result, traffic hit an all time high of 13.6 million unique users in January. Publishers Daily sat down with Engadget editor-in-chief Michael Gorman and executive editor Chris Trout to discuss how the redesign helped the brand increase audience growth.

Later, Publishers Daily spoke to general manager of AOL's technology brands, Ned Desmond, about ad opportunities for the new Engadget. (AOL is Engadget's parent company.)

Publishers Daily: How did the redesign in December change Engadget’s brand identity?

CT: Traditionally, Engadget was a gadget blog that was all about hardware, software, smartphones and tablets. It was that way for 10 years. When Michael and I took over, we decidedto take a close look at everything and what we saw was a much broader audience for technology. Everybody has a smartphone in their pocket. So two years ago -- one year before the redesign launched -- we decided to broaden the scope of the site to look at technology’s impact on life. Basically the human experience as it relates to technology.

MG: The redesign was crucial to better reflect the new work. We shifted from a place where the vast majority of the content we were doing was re-blogs. We pushed our staff to do more original work. The site design didn’t make it clear that this editorial shift had happened unless you were paying close attention and reading everything. It wasn’t going to help new readers.

CT: [The Web site] is not as intimidating to people that are not super geeky. Our new approach is that we are not just talking about a spec sheet -- but the impact of that devices have on your daily life. Engadget is a grown-up, multimedia site. We are not just nerds in our basement writing about smartphones; we are now a large international team of journalists, video producers, designers and photographers. We wanted the visual language to reflect that.

Publishers Daily: How did the redesign help increase audience growth?

MG: It was reflected in the shift of people coming to the site. Before the redesign, [traffic] was about 50-50 returning versus new [visitors]. Now, it’s about 35% returning and 65% new coming to the site. We provide all the in-depth information to the hardcore Engadget reader, but we are writing it in a way more approachable to people not deep in it.

Q: I noticed there is growing Engadget readership by women. How have you manage to draw more women to the brand?

CT:  That’s due to the diversity of voice on our site. Years ago, our staff was much less diverse, and everybody was taught to write in the exact same voice. Now, we let our writers use their experience and voices to tell the stories in a way that makes sense to them, which is why we’ve seen such a drastic change in demographics. And more women work for us now.

Publishers Daily: Engadget’s new growth is coming from mobile and video. Why do you think readership is coming from there?

CT: We weren’t really doing video, and our video was produced by our editors. Quick and dirty stuff. Last year, we hired a director of video to build out a team of people. We created different series and upped our game on production. Everybody is rushing to get the ad dollars that are out there with video, but you do that and you betray your audience in some way. We have been selective about how and when we do video. We don’t produce anything just for the ad dollars. That gives us a sense of trust with the readership.

Publishers Daily: Will there be a greater focus on native advertising?

ND: The base layer remains the same - we carry display advertising and that’s a pretty rich market for us although in general, it’s gotten tougher for a lot of brands. But it’s still strong in the tech category. We are also working hard on the native content front. Our expansion of video has created a nice sort of platform for longer-term sponsorships around our video programming and new types of integrations. We are shifting to integrate sponsors to the show graphics, like the “brought to you by” show graphic and a shout out from the host thanking the sponsor.

Publishers Daily: Will there be more ad sponsorships?

ND: Our highest expectations are on native content, and I imagine that will grow a lot over the course of the year. There’s a lot coming up soon.

Publishers Daily: What are Engadget’s media strategies for 2016?

MG: When we’re trying to think about where we can go in the future we are not trying to play follow the leader.

CT: A lot of growth has been on AOL’s video platform. We are now going to concentrate to go off platform, to be where other people might be that don’t necessarily know about Engadget. There is a lot of opportunity to grow on social. And it’s not just going to be repurposed content from our web site.

MG: Another big focus for us is to build a network for freelancers around the world because we do a lot of event coverage. Also there is a central internal AOL team, AOL Studios, that we worked on last year for “Citizen Mars” that turned out well for us. Now we can leverage the studio’s team to create more polished, documentary-style videos.

CT: There are a lot of new mediums coming, like virtual reality. We are not just going to jump in there to be the first -- we want to be the best.