The context
On January 25, 2024, POLITICO Europe unveiled its new website. A web redesign created to match the exceptional election year ahead and to support the media's growth in Paris, London and Berlin, building on its success in Brussels and the expansion of its political and legislative news coverage in recent years.
This first phase of the politico.eu roadmap was carried out by Medianes, the studio, in collaboration with the Anagram agency, 10up and the POLITICO teams from April to July 2023.
A second mission was carried out between January and July 2024 to support the media outlet's development in France, particularly in the areas of communications and press relations.
Website redesign
Redesigning the POLITICO Europe website to meet new challenges
In April 2023, the POLITICO Europe team reached out to us through Max Leroy — Vice President of Product at POLITICO Europe — to strategically coordinate the redesign of their website. The team needed UX and design expertise, as well as support for the website redesign: readability, navigation, and overall visual appearance.
Establish POLITICO's leadership in Europe
Elections in Europe, the United States and the United Kingdom on one side, Israel-Hamas and Ukraine wars on the other: 2024 is a defining year for the political sphere. To meet these strategic challenges, the POLITICO Europe website needed to evolve. The goals of this redesign? To offer a political news site serving the daily needs of professionals in the sector, and thus strengthen the global position in the European political media market.
The new website needed to deliver an optimized reading experience, help longtime site visitors discover new publications, better showcase newsletters and podcasts, streamline ad integration, improve SEO performance, and ultimately boost the company's overall performance—while maintaining efficient load times. With the editorial team's growth and POLITICO Europe's expansion into local markets—particularly in Berlin, Paris, and London—plus the potential to improve search rankings and retention, a site redesign was essential to strengthen POLITICO's position in Europe.
Beyond this, we needed to establish a comprehensive digital acquisition strategy. We also worked on integrating politico.eu and POLITICO Pro to easily showcase the B2B product and its benefits.
Design the new website together
To kick off the mission successfully, we used various tools to understand the initial situation: a brainstorming session with teams to assess the current state using the Figjam tool, an audit of the previous site, a comprehensive benchmark, a definition of personas for the POLITICO Europe website; as well as workshops with the team at their offices in Brussels.
We worked together for several months to arrive at a set of changes that are now visible on this new site:
- A new homepage allowing you to switch between editing different countries while streamlining the content structure;
- A unified navigation bar with shortcuts specific to each edition and permanent shared sections — newsletters, podcasts, events, surveys, public policy ;
- A cleaner article page layout to improve reading experience, reduce interruptions at the start of articles, and make it easier to discover other content;
- New dedicated pages for POLITICO Europe newsletters, podcasts and events, with a new optimized signup journey ;
- A redesigned ad integration for the free site, along with better coordination with POLITICO Pro ;
- This, while retaining the qualities of the previous site: loading speed, technical optimizations, collected metrics, flexibility…
Start from user needs to think about structure and design
As part of this redesign, it was essential for us to reconsider the site's design, to make it clearer and more professional, in order to create a setting that better matched the quality of the content we produce. We thus worked on the objectives of this redesign, the new features to plan for, mockups of the main pages, and an initial design of all the visual elements. Elements from the POLITICO website in the United States were also incorporated, such as the small red dots that subtly precede content headlines. The Anagram agency subsequently took over to refine the graphic design and apply it across all pages, while the 10up agency handled SEO matters.
We started with user behavior to simplify navigation, streamline pages, and add recirculation options. The goal? To make discovering new articles on the site easier and smoother, as well as accessing pages featuring newsletters and podcasts. We also made sure, when adapting the mobile version from the desktop version, to maintain a single consistent layout—notably by placing ads in the same locations across different devices.
Communication
Support POLITICO's development in France
From January 2024 onwards, Médianes also supported POLITICO Europe on communication and press relations, initially on the occasion of the launch of the new site. We wanted to document the release as thoroughly as possible, to tell the story of the challenges involved, in a spirit of transparency with regular users of POLITICO Europe and their teams.
In spring 2024, our support focused more broadly on the development of POLITICO Europe in France. We supported the marketing team and the Paris editorial staff in building awareness of POLITICO among French readers, particularly in connection with the launch of new verticals.
With the year marked by major developments for the media outlet – a new website in Europe and France, new verticals, team expansion and broader coverage – the objective of this new mission was to provide strategic and operational support for communicating and promoting POLITICO in France.
The Medianes mobilized members – Marine Doux and Mathilde Carlier – thus supported the team in optimizing the messages conveyed and actions taken to promote POLITICO's editorial offerings to French audiences.
Work on structuring internal communications was also initiated, with the goal of optimizing how the team relays information.
Throughout the mission, we maintained regular exchanges with the team to best adapt our support to their objectives and needs during this transformative period for the media organization.
Optimize the launch of new offerings
We initially supported the POLITICO team with the launch of the Energy & Climate vertical in spring, as well as in preparation for the launch of additional offerings. We thus conducted work with the team across several areas of communication and press relations:
- Production of recommendations concerning social media publications and publication templates.
- Organizing sessions dedicated to public relations strategy and communications with the team.
- Production of an internal communication kit to be distributed aimed at ensuring the dissemination of information related to the launch of the Energy & Climate offering.
The objective was, among other things, to leverage the media coverage obtained as part of the first phase of the mission (Le Monde, Les Echos, Challenges, The Audiencers…), notably through statements from team members (Nicolas Sennegon, Executive Vice President and Managing Director for Europe; Max Leroy, Vice President Product).
Adapt POLITICO's
language elements into French
To continue adapting the media's editorial offerings in French environments, we conducted in-depth work with the team on language elements, messaging, and actions to prioritize in reaching a French audience, whether on their new verticals or their Pro offerings:
- Production of recommendations on language elements used for the Energy & Climat newsletter.
- Translation and optimization work on messaging, working alongside the copywriting team, on French language elements for the POLITICO Pro France offering.
- Production of a marketing and communications action plan – objectives, action and messaging recommendations – aimed at enhancing the editorial offering of POLITICO and its added value, in connection with French political news.
We were moreover pleased to catch a glimpse of the fruits of this work as early as September 2024, during the media's back-to-school event in Paris!
POLITICO
A media outlet dedicated to European politics
POLITICO is an American news outlet founded in 2007 covering political and institutional news. Building on its success, a European edition was launched in 2015. Over time, the outlet has become a reference point across the political sector, directing its entire offering toward the professional world. Committed to a non-partisan editorial line and the production of high-value content, POLITICO Europe is available in various formats: print newspaper, live events, podcasts, and newsletters.
