New site design utilizes video to make forum truly global

CNN and Time Inc. selected Concentric Studio to redesign and rethink several of their top online financial brands including CNNMoney and Fortune Magazine. As a precursor to these large-scale projects, we were asked to redesign a separate site for Fortune’s Global Forum, an annual international forum for top CEOs and business leaders.

The 2007 Global Forum was held in Delhi, India and the new site was conceived with a special emphasis on showcasing the conference videos, blogs, and featured panelists, enabling anyone around the world with an internet connection the ability to watch every session, without ever having to hop on a plane to attend the event in person. An unprecedented number of video segments were produced and published during the conference, with many of the videos edited in India and published across the globe in New York within minutes of having been shot.

One of the key objectives for the new site design was to revamp the architecture of the site and user interaction to draw more attention to the online videos and ensure visitor traffic was efficiently directed to all primary templates. The Global Forum main page incorporates a flash video preview module to showcase updated videos and introduce visitors to the latest panels and blog posts; all centered around the conference.

With the conference videos, panels and blogs produced and published around the globe and at different times, the site templates were designed with flexibility in mind—a modular layout system was incorporated so content modules could be easily repurposed and updated across other page templates.

Thus far, the early statistical returns indicate the Global Forum site is already a huge success—in the first month alone, the new site generated almost ten times the number of page and video impressions from the previous year. We look forward to seeing continued success for the Global Forum and hope the new site provides a blueprint for future Fortune conference sites down the road.

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