The new NowGamer.com has a greater emphasis on multimedia, with video content appearing throughout. Featured reviews, for example, have embedded trailers and gameplay footage; game trailers can premiere on the homepage; features, previews, news and cheats will all contain video content in one form or another.
HD content also plays a greater role, with both video and screenshots benefiting from the higher resolution and helping the site show games in their best light.
Social networking is an important aspect of any website and NowGamer.com now boasts a number of new features that enable both interaction and sharing. Drawing on the site’s “already-excellent” social network following, NowGamer’s readers will now find it even easier to communicate with each other with improved commenting and links with social networking sites. Importantly, there will be improved interaction with the site’s editorial team, and readers will even see their conversations with the team on the homepage.
NowGamer.com has had a complete visual overhaul, with more images displayed throughout the site. There have also been a number of important design and database changes that surface related content and make it easier for readers to navigate the site and get to the content they want. For example, the new homepage carousel contains multiple links for each item, which surfaces more content in the most prominent place on the site.
The new site has been built with a view to the future. With its CMS- based platform, future development is straightforward, enabling the editorial and development teams to create new and innovative feature styles, some of which are already in development.
NowGamer.com can also host themed channels. These channels can pull in and display any content from the site and can host off-site content as well. For example, there could be a channel dedicated to an individual game or new gaming format, a single publisher’s games, or a press showcase event. They can also be used to host video and Flash content.
Channels can even have restricted access so that only NowGamer.com’s members or visitors with access codes can see the content contained within.
These channels can be tailored to NowGamer’s partners’ requirements and will be designed accordingly. Each channel will come with a dedicated homepage widget and a menu link, giving the content excellent visibility on the front page.
NowGamer.com already contains a “goldmine” of gaming information including over 5,000 reviews and over 70 articles are posted on the site each and every week. NowGamer.com features a mixture of content generated by a dedicated team and the exclusive content from Imagine Publishing’s print magazines, including games and Retro Gamer.
Nick Jones, NowGamer.com Editor in Chief, commented: “I’m incredibly excited about the launch of NowGamer 2.0. From an editorial point of view, it enables us to provide even better games coverage than we could before, and we’ve also got some great new tech in here that will enable us to be flexible in the future in how we present that content.”
“I felt that we’d gone as far as we could with the old site and it was time for a refresh. We kept the things that worked and got rid of the things that didn’t. We then looked at how we could give our readers the best videogames website experience now and in the future. It was also important that we were able to provide a platform that will help our partners get their message across to their customers. I’m very pleased with the outcome.”
NowGamer.com recently recorded an important milestone: “We reached 500,000 uniques with the old site in just over two years, and with much better content on the new site, along with the new features and technology, I’m confident that we can reach a million uniques by the end of the year.”
