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Website makeover offers greater news service for Reading readers

The Reading Evening Post’s online news service has undergone a major makeover.

The new-look website, getreading.co.uk, features more headlines, a clearer layout and breaking news updates throughout the day.

There are new developments in the pipeline such as daily news bulletins, blogging and a newsletter for the massive business community in the Berkshire town.

Alison White, head of online news at the Evening Post, said: “There are a lot of things we are working on just now such as blogging software. Links through to our sister websites are also on the cards.

“I wanted business news to be at the forefront of the website because Reading is full of big companies.

“We can see that people are coming back to us more and more with comments.”

It has taken just under a year for the relaunched site to go from drawing board to a live launch but the old service was already seeing an increase in web traffic.

Comparative page impression figures showed an increase of more than double – 406,198 for February 2007 compared with 855,025 in February this year.

Regular visitors to the new site will see a much greater capacity for headlines and news on the homepage.

Journalists and photographers at the newspaper are also being trained to use a new, broadcast-quality video camera.

Alison added: “It’s much easier to navigate around. The beauty of the new site is that you find so much content in really usable sections.

“It’s a clearer layout which is much more advanced and 21st century.

“The amount of time people spend on our website is going up – page impressions are going through the roof.”