Telegraph.co.uk to relaunch

Telegraph Media Group is redesigning its website and relaunching it later this month. The changes to Telegraph.co.uk will see an increase in advertising inventory.

The redesign, which will be rolled out gradually, will initially affect the news, business and sport sections of the website. Further changes will be implemented every four to six weeks into 2009.

Paul Cheesbrough, TMG’s chief information officer, says the idea is to allow users to navigate through the site easier and improve accessibility in a bid to extend users’ engagement.

It will also be increasing the number of e-commerce services, with partnerships soon to be announced in sports betting, personal finance and travel.

Alison Reay, TMG digital media director, says it will provide more integrated advertising opportunities, particularly through the use of its in-house production unit.

“Because of the redesign we’re able to offer some new commercial opportunities to the market,” she says.

As part of the changes, at the top of every portal page TMG will increase the size of the banner advertising space to allow for “more creative scope” and will also provide more rich advertising content on its site.

“Combining these two [advertising] positions with additional commercial opportunities, we’re going to be able to go to market with additional homepage takeovers, which puts us in a different position to where we were in the past,” Reay says.