Category: Branding

Changing the way we do news

Image of old news page and new news siteAs part of the changes we’ve been making to our web presence, we’ve updated the way we present our news.

Previously, news items were kept in the news section of the main REANNZ site. This was ok for storage, but not so good for anyone trying to access the stories. Aside from using the search box, your only real option was to scroll down through multiple pages until you found the story you wanted.

As you can see, all that has changed.

We’ve moved our news stories to a separate, dedicated site on its own subdomain (news.reannz.co.nz). You can now access news items in a variety of ways, including via the categories, the story archive, the tag cloud or the related stories links at the bottom of each story.

You can also easily share the news stories on your favourite social media site, and you may soon be able to comment on the stories we publish, if you wish to do so.

On the main site

There are smaller changes to the main REANNZ site as well. The News & Events landing page now looks like all the other landing pages, and because of this it’s easier to find the Events page, the Media Releases page and the Newsletter Subscription page.

Additionally, if we need to add new pages to that section (we’ve got one or two in mind), there’s now a place for them to sit.

Search

Some of you may be wondering how these changes will impact our internal search function. In essence, they won’t. We’ve adjusted the parameters of that search function to include the news.reannz.co.nz subdomain as well.

So if you perform a search on the main site and the most relevant result is a news story within the news site, that story will still appear within those search results.

The search function on the news site is limited to just those pages on that news site.

Related stories

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Have you noticed the changes?

A couple of weeks ago we published a story about some the changes we’re making. The story focused on the change of emphasis away from our KAREN branding and towards REANNZ.

Much of this work has now been done, and you may have noticed the results on our website and twitter accounts.

Website

As many of you will know, our website used to be a little confusing. It made use of the KAREN branding, and the content reflected this. Yet the “about” section was all about REANNZ.

To fix this, we’ve replaced the logo, updated the tagline, and edited just about every page where KAREN appeared.

The site now reflects REANNZ much more strongly, which is how it should be. But don’t worry—you’ll still find references to KAREN here and there, where appropriate.

Twitter

Our Twitter account has gone through a similar change. It now carries the REANNZ logo and is called REANNZ News instead of KAREN News.

Rest assured, nothing else has changed. It’s still the same news under a new name.

What it means for you

All going well, you may not even notice these changes other than to find our website more understandable.

However, some of the changes we’ve made were to the page titles—and therefore to the address of that page. If you’ve bookmarked or linked to the pages in question, that bookmark or link may no longer work (sorry!). And yes, this includes our Twitter site.

What’s next?

One of the things we haven’t changed is the Domain name from which you can access our site. You may already be aware that you can find our site using:

All of these still work, but the KAREN domains are becoming less relevant and we have plans to point them all to our main one, which is www.REANNZ.co.nz.

We haven’t done it yet, and will let you know when it’s about to happen. Hopefully, if it all goes well, it’ll go seamlessly and you’ll hardly notice the change.

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KAREN vs REANNZ: Changing our approach

As you may have noticed, we’re starting to do things a little differently around here, and the impacts of this are already beginning to be felt. For us, one of those impacts is that our old branding strategy (where we highlighted KAREN the network ahead of REANNZ the company) is starting to feel a bit forced.

It doesn’t reflect our new intent. It doesn’t even reflect, in its entirety, what we do. So we’re taking the emphasis away from our KAREN branding and putting it on REANNZ.

In other words, we’re focusing on the company, what we can offer, and the people who make it all happen, rather than the network.

REANNZ Internet logoREANNZ Internet

Some of you may have noticed the first result of this change.  We’ve been working on our internet service for quite some time—and for most of that time we referred to it as the KAREN Research Internet Service.

We launched it last month (check out this news story and this section of the website for more details), but we called it something new: REANNZ Internet. Because that’s what it is.

REANNZ Video Conferencing logoVideo Conferencing

In the coming month, we’ll be changing the branding of our video conferencing service as well. It’ll no longer be known as the KAREN Video Conferencing Service (or KVCS for short), but rather it’ll be REANNZ Video Conferencing.

The service itself won’t change. It’ll just be the name—and even then, it won’t be all at once. For a while, you can expect some of our documentation to reflect the old name, but anything we put together from now on will reflect the new.

Other changes

Naturally, other REANNZ products will undergo a similar rebranding as time goes by, and we’ll do our best to keep you informed so there won’t be any surprises. But one of the more obvious changes is scheduled to happen quite soon: the KAREN logo on our website and Twitter accounts will be replaced by the REANNZ logo.

So, in the next couple of weeks, if you find yourself looking at the REANNZ website (or our Twitter site) and thinking that something is different, you’ll be right.

Note: we’re still looking for feedback on our website so we can get a better understanding of any issues. Is there a page that’s impossible to find, or confuses you every time you read it? If so, let us know. Contact the REANNZ webmaster.

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Changing our website

Over the next few months you may start to notice a few changes with the REANNZ website. We’re just starting a process that should result in making it easier to find the information you need, and making that information more easily understood.

In other words, we’re going to be making our website more useful and usable—at the same time as ensuring that it continues to reflect any changes in direction that REANNZ might take.

What it means for you

Many of the pages on our site will change position. There’s a good chance some will be split in two, or compressed into one. They might be edited, added to or completely re-written.

The end result is that if you’ve bookmarked a particular page, it might be that at some point in the future that bookmark will no longer work (sorry about that!). Of course, if it’s a major change, we’ll do our best to let you know what we’ve done—but we’re expecting a lot of the changes to be smaller and incremental in nature.

The good news is that, when we’re finished, it should be much easier to find that page you’re looking for—whatever that page might be.

How You can help

We’re very aware that a lot of people struggle with our website, and we’d very much like to know where the pain points are. So, do you have a particular issue? Is there a special something on our site that confuses you every time you read it?

Is there a page that’s so hard to find that you regularly give up on the navigation, Google it and come back that way?

Is there some much-needed information that we should include but just don’t?

Let us know

We’re collecting this type of information from every source we can find (including Google analytics), and the more we can get, the better the end result should be.

So send your pet peeves through to: Webmaster@reannz.co.nz

We look forward to hearing your thoughts.

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