It's A Better Thing: Marthastewart.com Relaunches
- by April 10, 2007
The first phase of the new marthastewart.com launches today with improvements in search and navigation, a more streamlined user interface, an archive of how-to videos, and an extensive article library.
For now, it's mostly Martha. Promised later this year are community-focused polls, forums, message boards and other features built on passions.
The goal of the relaunch is to make marthastewart.com the most authoritative lifestyle destination on the Web, according to Holly Brown, president of Internet for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. "It's a big opportunity within the lifestyle space. There are 100 million women online monthly. We really want to be the source for all things lifestyle online."
The redesign no longer siloes content, but instead allows users to search across MSLO brands and media forms for categories such as entertaining, or topics such as scrapbooking. Recipes can be searched by ingredient, meal course, or holiday. Recipes--more than 180 for chocolate cake alone--are also packaged and promoted with videos.
"We've given consumers a lot more tools to make their searches more relevant and help them find what they're looking for," Brown said.
The site offers more than 700 videos--including full-length daily episodes of Martha's eponymous TV show, how-to clips and cooking segments--as well as segments from "Everyday Food TV" and audio clips from "Martha Stewart Living Radio" on Sirius Satellite Radio. Beyond that, are more than 5,000 recipes and thousands of articles from company magazines Martha Stewart Living, Everyday Food, Blueprint, Martha Stewart Weddings and body + soul.
Other new features are the top seven site searches shown in real-time and "Today's Idea from Martha." The Bluelines blog (www.blueprintmag.com/blog ) is a new venue for the editors of MSLO's newest magazine Blueprint, to share tidbits on their favorite finds, useful ideas, and shortcuts for creating and refining personal style--including shopping, decorating, design and beauty.
The first phase of the Web overhaul comes more than 16 months after MSLO management said it would invest heavily in the company's digital strategy. Since the end of 2005, the digital team has tripled in size from 20 to about 60 people, according to Brown.
Compared to other women and family-focused sites implementing major redesigns (Disney's Family.com and iVillage), the marthastewart.com revamp starts out light on social networking and community.
"They did bring in video content heavily, but did a lightweight job of integrating social media," said David Card, senior analyst, Jupiter Research. "I think it's a gorgeous design and they did a nice job on the contextual search approach. It's a very advertising-friendly site and that's good for users as well because [MSLO] will create sponsored microsites with lots of useful information."
Some of the improvements on marthastewart.com are related to infrastructure and the content management system--things the audience can't see, Card noted. In addition, he said MSLO is working to better integrate paid search and search engine optimization.
The overhaul appears to enable advertisers to more easily buy sponsorships and ad programs across properties--offline and online--with integrated placements, pre-roll video and standard online ad units.
"Advertisers love the ability to connect with the audience we deliver and they're looking to us to do really smart integrated programs," said Beth-Ann Eason, senior vice president of Internet, who heads advertising and marketing for the digital operation.
Garnier and 3M's Scotch-Brite, for example, are advertising across platforms--on TV, in print and online, according to Eason, and "delivering a consistent message across all three."
Advertisers want video, Eason said, rattling off Dove, Kraft, Oil of Olay, Allstate, Buitoni, GE, Garnier, and HP.
"We're also trying to connect them with channel sponsorships -- like on our food channel -- for combined video and ad placements," she said. "We do have advertisers that are interested in pre-roll video."
Kraft is one of several new advertisers the relaunch brought in. It bought a home page takeover, and is running 160 x 600 and 300 x 250 units, along with an in-banner unit with embedded video player. Most ads are running within targeted areas like the Everyday Food, Food and Home sections.
Kraft also bought a cheese keyword package so that anyone looking for cheese recipes, salads, soups, and appetizers will see it in the search results, according to Martha Ramos, media planner for Kraft at Modem Media.
Haircare brand Garnier began an ad program with MSLO on TV, followed by pages in Body + Soul that also featured a link for consumers to access a downloadable PDF on skincare.
This fall, new community and personalization features will enable users to save, share, rate, review and collect content from the site--as well as interact with each other through interest groups dedicated to specific lifestyle passions and concerns.
"Community with personalization is what we're focused on later this year. We'll be focused on how do we invite conversation around our content--whether it's standards, ratings or recommendations," Brown explained. "We don't want to do it just to do it. Having the community comment on what's easy versus what's aspirational is very valuable, and then it's not just Martha saying it's easy or difficult--it's users like you and me."
Marthastewart.com racked up 1.3 million U.S. unique visitors in February with an average of 11.2 minutes spent per visitor, according to comScore Media Metrics. Sites that offer similar content include HGTV.com, which posted 6.1 million unique visitors in February, along with BGH.com (Better Homes & Gardens) which had 2.4 million uniques; and DIY.com (2.3 million). ComScore reported that iVillage posted 15.1 million uniques with an average of 9.4 minutes per visitor.
