News
glasscanada.com redesign – a new web spun

Hooray! The overhaul of our website, glasscanadamag.com, is finally complete and the new, totally redone site is now live for you to go and take a look. I think this new layout is going to provide a huge improvement to the online experience for all our readers.

If you use a mobile device to visit our site (as about a quarter of our visitors do) you will see the biggest difference. Gone is the tiny version of our desktop site with miniscule print and links too small to tap. The new version is a true mobile-friendly site with headlines arranged vertically for easy scrolling on a phone or tablet. If you have tried to visit glasscanadamag.com on a mobile device before and been discouraged, I encourage you to try again.

The experience on a desktop will benefit from our new “everything upfront” layout that puts more of the content on the home page rather than buried behind links and menus. It’s friendlier for someone who just wants to browse to see what is new and to be able to choose from a big selection of articles, news items, opinion columns and other content without necessarily being exactly sure of what they are looking for. If you are looking for something specific, the new search engine is much improved. There is also a large archive of video, instead of just one featured box.

Another major upgrade has been to the way our technology information is organized. You can now choose from Glass, Hardware and Glazing Systems, Machinery, Insulated Glass, Software, and Film and Laminate categories. From there, it is easy to select a subcategory and browse the new product releases submitted by our suppliers. It is a fast and easy way to get a sense of what is new and available. The rest of the content is organized around which part of the business you are most interested in: items on productivity and innovative, energy efficient technology for fabricators; items on design and good business practices for contractors. Codes and standards are so important they get their own category, which I’m hoping to turn into a very useful resource for the industry.

The boundaries between digital and print media are breaking down. No, that is not just Information Age communications theory woo, it actually means something specific. It means that where a print magazine might once have been viewed as something different and distinct from the online channels, with a different function and different content, it is now becoming more and more part of an integrated communications strategy where a message is put across in several different ways so that readers can absorb it however and wherever they wish. The goal of our website is to give you everything you might get from reading the print edition, plus enhanced access to all the information resources of the Internet, plus access to the interactivity of social media.

I hope our site will become a regular drop-in for you when you have a spare moment or two. Please send me your feedback and suggestions – we want to make glasscanadamag.com your online home for glass industry business information.