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Radio NZ gets international recognition, Kiwis swell with pride

Radio New Zealand’s recently redesigned website has received an international nod of approval.

The website, radionz.co.nz, is a finalist in the World Summit Awards’ e-media and journalism category. The awards celebrate “e-content and creativity”, according to the WSA’s website, and promote that content at a global congress.

The redesign launched on 26 May.

“I think we were nominated because of our innovative approach to publishing content,” says Radio New Zealand new media manager Richard Hulse.

“It’s material that reflects New Zealand culture and we’re putting it online and we’re keeping that content online, and we’re doing this against a backdrop of having a fixed budget.”

The new site’s concept was created by the Clemenger Group, with Southgate Labs stepping in later in the project to solve some remaining issues and pull the design together.

Before RNZ could redesign the front-end, it had to replace the back-end – the company built a new content management system from scratch.

“It gives us complete control over everything that appears on the front-end, so we’re not constrained by someone else’s view of how it should run,” says Hulse.

The redesigned website features a cross-platform player, so stations and archives can be streamed on both desktop and mobile devices, and an improved search function. It also introduces date-based navigation to make browsing RNZ’s archives easier.

Hulse says the organisation saw a surge in traffic to the site after the relaunch, which has “obviously reduced a bit”, but after two and a half months traffic is still up overall.

18 percent of traffic to radionz.co.nz is international, with Australians the second most- likely to visit the site after Kiwis.

Radio New Zealand will find out whether they’ve conquered the world or not when the winners are announced this October in, of all places, Estonia.

Check out the evolution of RNZ’s website below, from 1998 to 2013. 

 

 

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