Where they were
One of the crown jewels in the Canada Wide Media publishing empire, the Vancouver Magazine website reflects the brand identity of the print publication. Featuring rich articles and regular columns about the city’s eating, drinking, cultural and social outlets, VanMag’s owners had many decades to polish the print edition of their brand but faced sizeable challenges to make the digital presence as enjoyable to their audience.
Website functionality and optimization were not in the nature for experts in print magazines. They needed a digital partner that could translate the technological jargon and explain what the Vancouver Magazine brand needed to fully blossom online and serve as a complementary arm to the legendary magazine.
Where they are
The first step was to introduce a new content management system to the editorial team. Very quickly the writers of the magazine saw an improvement on their time management, allowing them to do more writing and reclaim lost time.
Snaptech also taught the VanMan team the foundations of SEO so that their articles could get better organic results and thus more readers to the site.
Site metrics have improved dramatically in the past six months, adding tens of thousands more page impressions. This in turn increased the revenue for the site and has exposed new readers to the Vancouver Magazine brand.
What was needed
Vancouver Magazine needed a digital agency that could work with their management, sales team, and editorial team. Interfering with the already existing publishing process couldn’t be possible, as it would impact the release date for the next issue and jeopardize the workflow. But they also needed new ideas that would improve the site’s existing metrics, and show a roadmap for online growth and expanding revenue opportunities.
Snaptech began by producing a detailed report outlining the challenges and opportunities for Vancouver Magazine’s digital presence. After delivering it to management, a deeper partnership was proposed between the two companies and agreed upon.
Snaptech became intimately involved with the digital content strategy (including social media) for VanMag. As we looked at ways to grow online readership, the VanMag website was redeveloped. Thousands of content rich pages needed to be redirected to a new content management system (CMS) without losing the rich organic traffic these pages built up over years. Every aspect of a new VanMag website was examined, from site speed to SEO, editorial control, and mobile/desktop user experience.
After many months of work the rebuilt Vancouver Magazine website was launched in fall 2022, with faster load times, improved organic results, and reclaiming valuable work hours from an improved CMS.
search engine optimization
social media planning
web development
web strategy