Creative Circle launches new web sites, print redesign

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Creative Circle Media Solutions launched six new web sites and a print redesign in July and August.

For the Springfield (Mo.) Business Journal, Creative Circle launched a new site Aug. 14 at www.sbj.net along with an all-video sister site at sbjlive.net. SBJ switched its primary site from 1Up to Creative Circle in the transition.

“SBJ’s video site offers an interesting approach to video,” says Bill Ostendorf, president and founder of Creative Circle. “Most of the site consists of native video advertising, with lots of area experts and leaders offering tips on how to manage your business or improve your skills. Six broad topic areas include inspire, how-to, experience, life, startup and trending. It’s certainly a concept any local newspaper could adapt to grow video revenue and content.”

The Press and Journal in Middletown, Pa., which had previously upgraded its print newspaper through a redesign with Creative Circle and switched its primary web site (www.pressandjournal.com) to Creative Circle’s mediasiteQ platform, moved two of its niche magazines to Creative Circle’s web platforms. The Central Voice (www.thecentralvoice.com), an LGBT publication, and Woman Newspapers (www.womannewspapers.com), a women’s magazine, launched in July and August, respectively. Creative Circle is also launching four directory sites for the company, one of which is already live at www.PSUGuide.com. The Guide serves the Penn State Harrisburg campus.

Meanwhile, The Hill Country News in Cedar Park, Texas, became the first of five Fenice Community Media Group weeklies to switch from Town News to Creative Circle. Creative Circle provided custom programming to facilitate the paper’s unique circulation and high school sports strategies.

The Creative Circle team also launched a print redesign and a new web site for Saratoga Living magazine in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. As part of a broader consulting project, Creative Circle helped switch the magazine from paid to free distribution and create a long-term strategy to grow revenue, readership and reach. The premiere issue using the redesign had an expanded distribution of 20,000 copies showcased at more than 200 venues throughout the region.

The magazine redesign made a strong commitment to print, with a larger format, higher quality printing and paper and expanded content. “The larger format really made a strong impression in the marketplace. The magazines were flying off shelves during the busy August tourist season and we nearly ran out of magazines to restock with,” said Ostendorf whose team in East Providence, R.I., also designed and produced the magazine through its outsourcing services.

Their new web site (www.saratogaliving.com) was converted from a WordPress site.

All Creative Circle's new sites are flexible, easy to run and are built using templates and user interfaces that typically sharply increase user engagement with longer on-site times, increased page views and lower abandonment rates. Using Creative Circle’s dynamic web layout engine, staffers can easily change the layout of any page, add or subtract ad positions, showcase the best content and pick appropriate templates for content with just a few mouse clicks.

Creative Circle will launch three print redesigns for daily newspapers and six more new web sites in September and October.

“While Creative Circle has transitioned to a digital company, it’s great to see publishers reinvesting in print through our training and redesign services,” says Ostendorf, adding that the company will lead more print redesigns in 2017 than it has since 2008. The company has redesigned more than 600 print newspapers and magazines, most of them since 2000. “The recession brought on quite a lull in redesign work. But we’re thrilled that our print redesign business has rebounded so strongly in the past two years and that our premium outsourcing services for high-end print products and ad designs is also growing. Print is and should remain a core product for publishers for years to come. It still works if publishers are willing to invest in growing print readership and revenue.”