Colophon Provides Advertising Boost For Charleston Home + Design

Web & Software Development

Charleston Home + Design has been a beloved publication in the Lowcountry since 1999. The quarterly publication is a go-to source on the latest in home and design, and it also organizes annual local design staples including the Charleston Home + Design Show, the Charleston Fall Home Show at the Gaillard Center and the Daniel Island Home Luxury Tour. To ensure that CH+D’s new website ads would deliver the most value, Colophon created a handy “spot map” for the site. This tool provides the CH+D team with the ability to control where it places each ad on the backend. It also facilitates the process of understanding each ad’s dimensions and its best fit within the site. The build ensures that the team can manage their advertising placements in-house for the long-term. Another key benefit of the “spot map” is that it makes it easy to ensure that each ad is located in the space where it will perform the best. CH+D now receives real-time data reports on how each ad is doing in terms of the clicks and impressions it is generating, and moving ads around based on this data is a quick, easy process.

What was the main challenge in this project?

This project required a heavy lift on a short turnaround of less than eight weeks. In a nutshell, Colophon’s objective was to revamp the look of the CH+D website to introduce static advertisements throughout without overpowering the user experience. The first step of this extensive process involved re-drawing templates to tastefully integrate advertising space that would showcase CH+D’s trusted partners and advertisers to site visitors. Creating 17 unique spaces for nine different types of ads required a ton of creativity and programming by the Colophon team, which worked closely with new CH+D CEO Courtney Kutzman and Editor Micaela Arnett on this project.

What was your solution or approach?

With all of this prominent publication’s advertising capacity now optimized, CH+D has been able to monetize its substantial website traffic like never before, bringing great visibility for the magazine’s trusted local partners. The work Colophon did to improve how CH+D’s advertisers are featured also resulted in an improved overall look for the site, which matches and complements the stunning, quarterly print magazine.