Vibethink Official Site

From the Editor’s Desk

admin — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 21:20:29 +0000

“What really sold us on [Vibethink's] team was that they shared our ideas about what makes a good local media site, and they cared about our paper’s role in the community. We wanted to make something that was easy to use (for us and for you)…and we wanted to create a platform that we could constantly modify and improve as things changed.” – Giles Morris, C-Ville Editor

Thanks, Giles. We liked working with you too.

Online to Offline

admin — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 14:19:44 +0000

At Vibethink, we integrate our digital work with our client’s overall business. At its heart, C-Ville is still an ink and paper publication, so their new website makes it easier for them to print newspapers. Specifically, the back-end of C-Ville.com is calibrated to serve editors, so that they can easily schedule stories and polish drafts in collaboration with their reporters. Layout editors are particularly happy about C-Ville’s new, custom online calendar, which automatically exports to an Adobe print template, shaving hours from their day.

For Sale

admin — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 07:21:15 +0000

Vibethink believes that great design looks best when it generates a great ROI. Vibethink’s strategy zeroed in on C-Ville’s revenue source: advertisements. We integrated their new website with Google DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP), the advance standard for targeted advertising across the web, and even went a step further by customizing DFP to reflect C-Ville’s readers. Finally, we trained the newspaper’s sales team in DFP, so that they could make the most of their new technology.

A Social C-Ville

admin — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 06:53:17 +0000

As renowned digital thinker Paul Adams puts it, a website without good social is like a house that isn’t hooked up to the power grid. We made sharing articles easy and intuitive so that C-Ville can convert its readers’ excitement into expanded distribution. We also re-engineered C-Ville’s comment pane to make navigation between reading and responding more natural. The new layout empowers reporters and editors to extend and deepen the life of their stories by getting involved in conversation with their readers.

Tearing Down Walls

admin — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 04:21:47 +0000

The old C-Ville.com hid a lot of the paper’s best assets. That website had divisions between different kinds of content, and lacked information about the newspaper’s awesome reporters. We tore down the walls that were separating restaurant reviews, real estate coverage, and regular news, and we brought writer bios and pictures forward to highlight C-Ville’s personality.

Design For Life

admin — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 03:19:53 +0000

At Vibethink, behavioral research informs aesthetics. For example, knowing that readability would be a priority for this website, we studied column width, text size and font to maximize user comfort. We also made sure that the richness of C-Ville’s weekly content would be apparent on a daily basis by presenting their articles in a grid format, which draws readers’ eyes to individual stories, countering the natural human tendency to skim over listed content.

The Blueprint

admin — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 02:04:31 +0000

Our team knew that C-Ville Weekly needed more than an updated look. The paper needed a brand new digital strategy. Using many different “wireframes,” which are like blueprints for the web, we worked with the paper to construct an online presence from the ground up. Our tireless attention to user experience has resulted in a digital approach that will continue to work for C-Ville and will excite its readers for years to come.

Rebuilding C-Ville

admin — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 01:40:44 +0000

C-Ville Weekly is Charlottesville, Virginia’s source for arts and culture news. The paper is a cornerstone of its community, publishing top-notch content with an eclectic voice. For this local institution, Vibethink forged a fresh digital business strategy, centered on outstanding web design. C-Ville’s new online platform lives at the intersection of the paper’s business needs and the needs of its readers, fostering vibrant relationships and superlative journalism. Explore the new C-Ville.com, or read further about our process here.

Unprecedented Success

admin — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 16:04:41 +0000

With the help of Vibethink’s web design, marketing ingenuity and sheer persistence, Sons of Bill broke into the Billboard Charts for the first time in their career. They reached 183 on the Billboard Top 200 and hit an all-time high in their social media activity and reach.

Step 4: Leveraging Local

admin — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 16:03:20 +0000

In the days leading up to the Sirens release, Sons of Bill held a series of free concerts in their home state of Virginia, thanking their long-standing fans. Through digital and traditional marketing, we spread the word about these shows to every fan who could attend them. Then, to cement the value of those performances, our graphics team created download cards that allowed fans to relive the concerts online with free streaming audio and, while they were on the site, to pre-order Sirens.