CSMonitor.com (www.csmonitor.com) has been using eZ Publish to complete their Web first strategy, driving growth through their online channels since 2009. The Christian Science Monitor turned to eZ for their out-of-the-box functionality to handle their publishing and editorial process. eZ Publish is able to track and manage the state of each piece of content as it moves through the workflow. This enables the editorial team to be more agile, while keeping much-needed control over the production and placement of the content. Now journalists and editors around the world can publish articles efficiently, intuitively and around-the-clock.
With greater control and agility, over the past year, the site has enjoyed increased traffic overall. "A key contributor to our increasing traffic is the fact that editors are now asked to enhance their articles with related content such as other articles, blogs, photo galleries and videos. To help them do that efficiently, we needed a simple mechanism to find relevant associations," commented David Scott, Online Director, The Christian Science Monitor. "eZ provided the solution so we could more easily enrich the content and increase page views-per-visit and therefore impressions and revenue."
In November of 2011, CSMonitor.com upgraded its content management system and server architecture in response to recent traffic growth and to better position itself for future growth and innovation.
"Working with CSMonitor.com, we've seen increased commitment, investment, and success in their Web presence," added Peter Keung, Managing Director, Mugo Web. "Keeping the environment in tune with the latest releases from eZ Publish Enterprise ensured that we can capitalize on the continued enhancements and increased stability."
Since drastically innovating their production model in 2009 by shifting from a print-first to a web-first model, The Christian Science Monitor has consistently increased monthly traffic. They increased page views from 9 million to 19 million page views in just the first 12 months, and to 30 million in only 2 years. Over the past one and a half years, web development partner Mugo Web has helped the Monitor become the most visited eZ Publish site in North America. In the past year, CSMonitor.com has also achieved a 30% increase in the average number of page views per visit (from 2.2 to 2.85). In addition, CSMonitor.com saw a 58% increase in total page views per month (from 19.4 in December 2010 to 30.7 in December 2011) while increasing unique visitors by 24% (from 6.6 million to 8.2 million).
Recent upgrades have allowed CSMonitor.com to achieve these milestones by adding new features that have focused on increasing reader engagement including quizzes, social networking tools, improved video content, and auto-tagging and grouping of related articles. Its internal, global news team continues to publish breaking news and commentary daily. The site also hosts archive content as far back as 1980.
The upgraded content management system eZ Publish Enterprise has brought performance and stability improvements, as well as enhanced front page management and enterprise-grade search functionality. The upgraded server architecture includes failover database replication and improved clustering for increased scalability.
About Mugo Web:
Mugo Web (http://www.mugo.ca) is a leading vendor of services around eZ Publish in the Americas. They do all web development work in-house and have clients in publishing, health care, legal services, non-profit organizations, government, and more. They are a long-time eZ Publish partner and a contributor to the eZ Publish kernel.