FT.com Relaunching This Week: Pink Front Page, New Name Target 'Obsessive' Users

This story was written by Patrick Smith.

FT.com will tomorrow roll out the latest installment of its long-term web redesign with a pink front page and a region-specific homepage for its growing Middle East audience. Those are some of the immediate changes but, as a redesign, it's more like a war of attrition: more changes are on the way but the whole process won't be over for some months. In an interview with paidContent:UK, FT.com editor James Montgomery spoke of his long-term goals and why there's no money to be made in attracting casual users.

-- Redesign brand ID: Only the site's homepages are getting the pink treatment for now, but the rest of the site will follow. And it's not just aesthetic, it's all about the brand: the fonts, design stylebook and color palette are all borrowed straight from the newspaper. "We think the Financial Times is a very strong brand and we want the website to have that core brand identity, not be some separate distant thing that it has been in the past," says Montgomery.

-- From 'FT.com' to 'Financial Times': There is also a conscious move away from calling the site "FT.com": now the front page will be clearly labeled 'Financial Times'. That's designed to tell traditional readers the FT is one of the few newspapers in the UK with a level of growing print circulation that the website has the same content they like and more. Though Montgomery is keen to stress that FT.com is "a very handy URL, and we won't be giving that up". Much more on paidContent:UK

By Patrick Smith