SBJ premieres redesigned Web site

The online changes allow SBJ to break out of its weekly shell. The editorial department now is delivering business information as it happens, on a daily basis, via e-mail.

“For a long time we’ve been wanting to offer breaking business news as well as in-depth weekly coverage,” said SBJ Publisher and President Dianne Elizabeth Osis. “Being able to use the Web site to reach our readers with late-breaking news is the realization of a dream for us.”

SBJ previously offered daily news updates, originally by fax machine, beginning in 2000. Osis said the idea was ahead of its time and eventually went by the wayside.

Osis calls the e-news Daily Update the new site’s most important feature. Registered users will receive free e-mails with business news of the day. The e-news is sent out just before noon.

Readers can submit story ideas and enter information for most regular features of the print edition, including Newsmakers, Business Spotlight, Open for Business and From the Ground Up. The new site features an improved archive search, photographs and an interactive community calendar.

Visitors also can purchase or renew subscriptions, buy tickets or nominate honorees for SBJ’s special events: 40 Under 40, the Dynamic Dozen, Economic Impact Awards and Most Influential Women.

Full access to the site is free but requires visitors to register. Access to archived stories will require a fee at a later date for those who don’t subscribe to the print publication.

All the new bells and whistles didn’t come cheap; Osis estimated the cost in the first year to be about $50,000, including marketing and a new staff member – Online Reporter Dee Dee Nilsen. Nilsen and the SBJ editorial staff write original e-news content, and Nilsen is responsible for posting the weekly print edition.

The new site also provides a new opportunity for advertising revenue. Advertising and Marketing Director Mike Noggle said the response from businesses has already been positive.

“I think (the sales staff) have already sold all the banners on the home page, and most all of the spots on the daily news updates,” he said. “It’s given us the opportunity to get in front of new people, and everybody’s gotten very excited about it. But that goes back to 25 years of credibility from the paper itself. It all goes back to the printed piece.”

Carol Jones, Realtors agent Jeff Mosley, Commerce Bank, Kingsley Group, LaDon Mortgage, PC Net and Team Media already have purchased ads on the new site. Costs range from $15 to $550 a month, depending on size and placement.

Making it happen

SBJ hired Arkansas Business Publishing Group to revamp the Web site, as a result of ABPG’s success with its own redesign. ABPG President and Publisher Jeff Hankins oversaw a redesign of his publication’s site, www.arkansasbusiness.com, in 2001, and said the results for his business were tremendous.

“Much like Springfield, we were a weekly business publication with strong loyal readership, known for its credibility and its local business coverage, but we were just a weekly publication,” Hankins said. “With our new site and our daily e-newsletter, we became a daily news product. It not only transformed our organization, it also created an incredibly valuable resource for our readership.”

Arkansas Business’ site was so successful, in fact, that several other publications began approaching Hankins for help with their sites. Hankins said he got tired of sending his colleagues to other Web developers, so he started an internal Web design company, called Flex360. That company has since designed sites for dozens of small businesses in Arkansas, as well as business publications in Los Angeles, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Hankins said SBJ should enjoy similar success with its site. The company sends e-newsletters to more than 11,000 online subscribers, and more than 30,000 visitors have registered on Arkansas Business’ Web site since its redesign.

“I think the new SBJ Web site and its daily e-newsletter will be remarkable not just for the business journal but for its readers and advertisers in terms of reaching an online audience and receiving business news as it happens,” Hankins said.

Osis noted, however, that SBJ’s print edition remains the centerpiece.

“We see it as a new day for the growth of SBJ,” Elizabeth said.

“We have a lot to offer business and professional people in southwest Missouri, and now we can offer even more. It’s going to change the way we do business.”

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