AsianInvestor.net's new look

We have undertaken a major redesign of AsianInvestor.net that we hope will improve interaction and usability for our readers as well as making our website easier on the eye.

The digital design refresh – which has been done in sync with AsianInvestor magazine – includes several new features, and we plan to introduce more functionality as this year progresses.

One key change is that readers can register under a username of choice (thereby providing on-site anonymity) and post comments on articles. These will be post-moderated, meaning we will edit them after they have been published, so you can post your views and see them straightaway.

Through this we hope to generate an exchange of views. Such interactivity will also be available in our polls section, where users can post comments directly, too. If you want to canvass industry opinion on a particular topic, for instance, why not put forward a new poll question?

Of course, greater interactivity means greater responsibility for us as a host site. As moderators we will act if your posted comments are deemed threatening, offensive, libellous, indecent, promotional or in any way unlawful. This is included in our revised terms of conditions of use.

To improve our site further, we have streamlined our areas of coverage to better reflect what we feel you want to read about, namely asset owners, distributors, fund managers, alternatives and asset services. This, we believe, will help to strengthen the AsianInvestor brand.

The new-look website also offers a more structured selection of content featuring the latest articles from both today and yesterday, the editor’s picks of our best recent stories and featured topics comprising a collection of articles on a subject we hear the industry is talking about most.

The first topics we have selected are electronic trading and exchange-traded funds, two of the fastest growing areas that underline the rapid development of Asia’s asset management industry. This section is designed to give readers convenient reference to a variety of views, with topics to be refreshed and updated on a regular basis.

From a visual perspective, we have renovated the AsianInvestor logo after 10 years (while retaining our red, white and black heritage) and sought to present a sharper, more modern look for our homepage. We have broken up the text more frequently with larger images, and included a broadened gallery section, as well as fund videos.

Importantly – and in response to industry requests – we want to develop an industry discussion forum for asset managers to debate and exchange information on topics of their choice. For this we want your feedback in order to deliver the most functional format. What form do you think this forum should take? What would prove most useful to you, and how would you use it?

We also want to develop a rolling news segment to feature investment views of the day from a variety of industry players. These will be concisely edited and updated as they come in, creating a thread that readers can log onto at any time to see what their peers are saying.

Please offer us your feedback on these ideas and the general look of the website by commenting on this story below, or by writing to [email protected]. 

In terms of improvements we plan to make, we will be updating our iPad application to combine magazine and web content and allow users to personalise sections and content to make it specific for them.

The fact is that more people are reading AsianInvestor, and more of that is coming from mobile devices. Already in 2012 we’ve had more than a quarter of a million site visitors at an average of 63,000 a month. A growing 14% is coming from tablets and smartphones, up from 11% late last year. Just today our new daily newsletter has been sent to more than 40,000 recipients.

For paid subscribers, there are now more than 26,000 archived articles available on our two finance titles, AsianInvestor and FinanceAsia; we have added a further 1,200 since last November.

We hope that you enjoy our new-look website and can forgive us our initial teething problems; we will endeavour to improve it further, and with your help and support we will provide you with the sort of service you crave.