Biggest, Baddest Web site in the Valley?

The Morning Call has launched a new/revised web site and declares, “The Morning Call's Web site is the most useful and popular Web site in the Lehigh Valley, and today it gets even better.”

Then I saw the hot topics listed at the top which noted:  “Jon and Kate Update, Minnie Mouse Assaulted, Miley Cyrus and a Stripper Pole?”  Hmm…

 

To me, this begs for comparison (especially when it is a slow news day), so I decided to take a look at its Alexa Rank compared to other local sites (I left out the big boys – Google, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Craig’s List, and others that I’m sure are used more often by Valley residents).

I looked at The Morning Call, Lehigh Valley Live, WFMZ, Lehigh University, and Musikfest.

Lehigh posted the highest page rank at 7, MC and LVL were 6, and Musikfest 5.

In page views, page views per user, etc, the Morning Call was about even with Lehigh and Lehigh Valley Live and WFMZ were grouped tightly together and just a hair below (see graph).  Musikfest surged as summer got underway.

Using the search for the Morning Call I typed Nazareth, and was disappointed to get a single return for the month of August, until I switched from relevance to date and got what I expected.

The online experience today is about relationship building and sharing information as well as transparency and honesty.  When I clicked on TownSquare, I got a Title and a two sentence summary, but no indication of who wrote it.  Turns out it was a letter to the editor.  Would have been nice to know that up front instead of baiting the reader to make an additional page click, instances like that will result in less readership.

I then clicked on White, and it listed Bill White’s recent columns, had a profile photo, and an email address, but no bio link and no call to join him on social networks or to subscribe to an RSS feed.

On the More Blogs page there are requests to add an RSS Feed, but all of the blogs on the site are MC blogs, no outsiders.  On that note I have to give credit to Lehigh Valley Live for running feeds for local sites like my own.  While 50% of my readers come directly to the site, it is nice to expose new readers through a source like the Express-Times web site.

The Call changed its look and feel, probably made navigation a bit easier, removed some clutter not to mention the horribly annoying ads the covered your screen and pretty much assured you’d never purchase the product or service interrupting you, but I didn’t notice any functionality or feature changes.  I also am surprised that there was no call to follow them on Twitter or join them on Facebook.  I did notice they added a “share” button using “Share This” a service where you can post to a variety of social sites.  Overall, the redo barely incorporated social media, which would seem to leave the effort a bit short of what it could have been.

What do you think of the new site?  And what sites do you rely on?

Posted via email from Ross Nunamaker