New Website for The Parliament Magazine

The remakes of Brussels' main EU news websites seems nearly finished. After EurActiv and European Voice recently made changes to their website layout (the latter is covered over here) The Parliament Magazine is the latest to refresh their digital presence. It looks like only Euobserver is resistant to major changes to their website.

Published by DODS, a UK publishing house for political information, theparliament.com brings daily EU news, interviews and a press review of Europe's major newspapers. I had a look at the new version of their website:

Good:

• Better layout and navigation: The most visible change on the start page is the introduction of a left-hand policy-based navigation and a nice large top story image.


• The website footer clearly links to all EU related products of DOD.


• Citations in extra boxes are kept: something I like very much.


• Better integration of sponsors' links in the policy section pages, including logo visibility.
  

Bad:

• The difference between the "home" page and the "news" page is not that clear.
  
  
• Technicall, the start page has no title: It just says "home", which is also the title likely to appear in Google search results.
  


• Still no RSS feeds. A must for every news site in 2008.


• The old address http://www.eupolitix.com/ doesn't redirect.
  


• The agenda/calendar is too hidden: It is only further below on the start page that you find a box "This week in the EU" which holds a relatively detailed overview of the EU events (even if this info comes mainly from official sources).
  
  

Interesting:

• Not much advertising space: Just a standard banner on top of the site and a skyscraper on the left which is mostly filled with Google ads. There is no leaderboard banner and the only rectangular box ad (which is an increasingly popular format) is for the moment hidden on a sub page.


• Where are the press reviews? It wasn't very visible in the old version but it seems it is completely disappeared from the start page in the new version. However, despite being hidden, there is still a press review daily newsletter.
  
  

My conclusion:

It was a much needed update of the website but some further fine-tuning is needed. The introduction of policy-based sub pages is a key step for theparliament.com website.

For DODS, the print publication "The Parliament magazine" remains of course the main product for the Brussels market. And sometimes the new website looks a bit like the digital outlet for DODS' print publications. A bit more focus on the native digital products like daily events and press review could be wortwhile considering.