The Organisation

Economic & Political Weekly (EPW) occupies a special place in the intellectual history of India. As a public institution, EPW has been performing its role as a virtual university and hence has been shaping and directing the praxis for an inclusive society. Right from its inception, EPW has been successfully trying to produce a synergy through mobilising and disseminating creative ideas offered by theorists, social scientists, activists and policy makers through the EPW pages.

Goals of the Project 

EPW’s foray into the digital space is not new, the website (www.epw.in) was set-up in 2001, and over the years it has shown its commitment to the web and digital, as significant updates were made regularly. However, over the years, the website had not kept up with the rapid changes in the digital publishing sphere. 

The redesign project was carried out keeping in mind the core values of the organisation, and to address gaps in the current structure. Keeping in mind, the best practices in the industry, and thorough competition analysis, I created a strategic response to redesign the website in a way that not only addressed the “look and feel,” but also fundamentally shaped the ways in which our readers interacted with the website.

• Simplifying user flows

• Amplifying calls to action 

• Encourage content exploration 

• Install a modular system 

Problem Areas 

The EPW website (prior to 2020 September) mirrored the Economic & Political Weekly’s journal’s content page. This strategy, on a fundamental level, ignored the idea that the digital activities of an organisation have to be tailored for a digital audience. 

• Stale and repetitive content

• Restrictive three-column layout, impacting listing pages 

• No visual takeaways 

• Wasted real estate, not optimised for Google Ads 

• Lost opportunities for brand building 

• Dated colours, and fonts

BEFORE

AFTER