A big part of the project remit was to evolve a common and shared structure and design language across the entire site - so that the local newspapers could be rolled out quickly and efficiently, and ensure carry-over of brand values from one property to the next.
 

The name 'West Coast Today' did not emerge until near the end of the project - so that the final design had to be revised and refined when the moniker was fully settled.
 

At the same time the focus was on creating an optimal subscription journey. When the news hub site was first launched, a competitor scraped and plagiarised the site content within the first week. This competitor then re-published near identical articles credited with different but obviously fake journalists. Affino worked rapidly with Wyvex to adjust Affino's Metering Gateway settings, such that bots and crawlers could only have partial access to the content, crucially not having access to any full article.
 

The Affino proposition made for a shift in culture for Wyvex, and it impacted on several day-to-day tasks and duties - including the manner of how ad-sales were carried out. Where with the Affino solution - there would be a shift towards more precise topic targeting versus the more traditional run-of-site banner advertising.
 

Besides the significant Design work and collaboration, another significant task was the Import of existing Users, Subscriptions and Orders into the new Affino Platform. It involved some significant work by George Graham. The Import tasks are often the biggest part of a platform transition - and involve serious cleanup and re-organisation of the content and contacts in-advance, and once the transfer has been completed. 
 

As mentioned in the intro - the Wyvex Leadership team had to do a significant part of the heavy lifting as a bout of staff illnesses threatened to derail the project at one stage. While Stephen for Wyvex, and our Susan were able to keep things on track and hit the main deadline - which was an early 2024 launch.
 

The content migration took the most man-hours, while the design process incurred the most iterations per se. There were some challenges with E-editions and PDF formats, and in bringing the full stack of back issues of the digital editions across. But all those tasks were even-handedly dealt with - they just took time.
 

A big part of the collaboration was getting Wyvex staff fully onboard for the paradigm shift - in working towards a centralise News Hub / Portal versus the formerly individual and independent sites. That all progressed fairly smoothly, and most staff were easily brought up-to-speed and made comfortable with the process rather rapidly. Stephen actually oversaw the majority of the in-house training, and wrote all the significant operational documentation such that his colleagues could benefit also from his rapidly gained expertise.
 

A key consideration was for the older readers - mitigating the risk of alienating those when switching the focus from the established local newspaper brands to the new West Coast Today brand, and with the possibility of maybe losing some of them. The signposting and structuring of content was set out in such a way though, with dedicated local brand hub pages, which meant that there was consistency between the function and format of the printed press and the corresponding digital experience - to make that transition far more easier. 
 

Certain elements of continuity had to be maintained between formats, and seeing how universally well received the West Coast Today News Hub was to become, it seems like most of the older readers are still very much onboard and fully involved!
 

Along the way there were various refinements imparted on the content, the quality of imagery, and the overall design looks and feel - to create a welcoming and easy to use environment for readers of all ages. The new Affino-powered news hub also benefits from increased and improved engagement - right across the board!
 

Affino also worked with the Production Team - to enable a simplified workflow to extract content from the News Hub - via single click for each article - which would copy said content directly into Wyvex's Print Platform software - InDesign.
 

Throughout the project both sides tried to best imbue the site with a properly Local Feel, and a spirit of community. Fully unifying all the West Coast Scotland populations under the one West Coast Today banner!

The biggest part from the Affino perspective - and beyond the core Design and Structural areas - is which aspects of the Affino SaaS would be needed to deliver the project. There's so much in Affino - that if people try to bite off too big a chunk too soon - that inherent scope of complexity could add several weeks or more to the project. So it's always a matter of cutting the cloth to best fit the strategic goals of the project, and then ramping up and expanding in structured phases once the initial launch is complete.
 

Wyvex was Affino's first Newspaper client as such - and there was some concern at the start that a number of custom or extended Affino core elements would need to be evolved to meet the requirements for launching newspaper sites on Affino. That proved not to be the case as the Affino SaaS already covered all of Wyvex's requirements and much more.
 

Affino is largely a Media / Publishing solution with a long and storied track record for delivering highly complex publishing models online. It soon became evident that Affino as was at the time was wholly up to the task without the need for further embellishments, some tweaks maybe, but nothing of any complexity.
 

It was mostly a matter of specifying which parts of Affino delivered on the brief and purpose of the site. Note also that we're working on Wyvex Media's Fish Farmer and Scottish Field publications which are independent and distinct from the West Coast Local News Hub. Those have very different focuses - with Fish Farmer being firmly a B2B publication and Scottish Field one of Scotland's leading B2C magazines.
 

The following Key Affino Solutions have been deployed for West Coast Today, in alphabetical order :

• Ad Serving
• Analytics and Dashboards
• CRM for Audience, Sales, Subscriptions, Marketing and more
• CMS
• Editions - Publishing & Subscriptions Catalogue
• My Interests - Topic Taxonomy, Personalisation / Personal Recommendations
• Newsletter and Messaging - Regular daily messages
• Subscriptions - Online & Offline
• Metering - Registration Wall / Gateway 
• Search Services - Site Search / Scoped Search / In-Context Search

There were often dual functions for each solution - as say for instance the Metering Gateway was there to primarily encourage Registrations and Subscriptions, but also to block off bots and content scrapers!

Some Solutions like Affino's Audience CRM and CMS have an enormous remit which dovetails into all kinds of other areas - but where the key focus is that everything is fully centralised, and driven through a single database for more control oversight, empowerment and data accuracy.
 

It is very much akin to an Iceberg or a Tardis - where you're just seeing a small surface portion - which though covers an incredible scope of depth and breadth with significant efficiencies, synergies and automations for the overall most potent and productive management experience and audience engagement!

We've seen a number of articles already this year celebrating the success of West Coast Today - including significant ones from Newsbrand Scotland and InPublishing.

 
newsbrandsscotland.substack.com

 
www.inpublishing.co.uk/articles/wyvex-media-launches...
 

The top-line statistics are very strong indicators too - of how the West Coast Today News Hub has been universally well received - now with an average of 90,000 visitors / readers each month, with 12,745 registered users since the site went live at the end of January - for June/July there were 2,708 registrations alone.

 
Wyvex Media's Head of Online Content - Brian Hossack, stated "Although we have a stable of trusted brands that have served their communities for many years, we realised that combining these to a single digital focal point was a risk, but it has been superbly received by our readers."
 

Brian further states that everyone has been delighted by the impact and impressive growth of West Coast Today in such a short period of time.
 

West Coast Today has been instrumental in cementing Wyvex Media's ongoing quality reputation, and extending its reach to a larger audience overall. WCT also advances the business to fully take advantage of every evolving opportunity - well into the future.
 

In an environment where 294 local newspapers have gone bust since 2005, West Coast Today's 5 integral news brands - The Oban Times, The Campbeltown Courier, The Lochaber Times, The Argyllshire Advertiser and The Arran Banner - are bucking that trend and positively thriving.

www.westcoasttoday.co.uk