Launching a second site for the ‘Boston Globe’ has given the US publisher an opportunity to do more than just address demographic and monetisation issues.

A focus on making sure it was seriously mobile-friendly has led to the development of a screensize-based, rather than device-based product and what is in effect six sites.

The newspaper decided on a two-brand strategy last year, complementing the 15-year-old www.Boston.com site which now attracts two million page views a month and has seven million unique users. New BostonGlobe.com is more serious and authoritative – more of a reading experience – and includes premium membership.

“For that reason, we’ve developed offline reading capabilities, via a ‘save’ button,” says digital products vice president Jeff Moriarty.

But it is the ability to address the needs of users of the large number of different mobile devices – including those not yet released – which distinguishes it.

“We believe the future will be through mobile devices, but saw the proliferation and were anxious not to have to rebuild our product for each device,” says Moriarty, talking during IfraExpo in Vienna.

“As a result, the website has been built with six different break points for tablet formats,” he says. “The site allows swipe-through content, adapts automatically, changes navigation and on the iPad looks and works like an app.”

The launch process took just six weeks from start, following immediately on the publisher’s adoption of EidosMedia’s Méthode platform – used by 300 reporters – last December.

What he says is “the most ambitious website in the world” has brought a terrific reaction, including an “unbelievable” 10,000 Tweets about it on launch day. “People have been asking why every site isn’t like this.”

Moriarty says they thought of mobile as a critical version, “not a hobbled version”.

“As viewers use it on different devices, the site continues to adapt, right down to iPhone. Mind you, the designers were not happy about having to design six sites.”

Javascript is used in responding to screen sizes – so the site can cope with different devices as they come on the market – and there’s HTML5 behind the ‘save’ concept, which addresses offline reading and accesses a playlist to which content can be added.

Concatenation features and Méthode’s ability to chop images into multiple slices automatically also contribute to the major innovation, he says. “I don’t think we would have been able to do it without.”

The two-brand digital strategy sees Boston.com remaining free to users – as a one-stop source for ‘all things Boston’ – while BostonGlobe.com has been introduced as a new subscription site with the news and features of the daily and Sunday newspapers.

A range of Globe-branded digital products will also allow access to content “wherever, whenever and however readers wish”.

BostonGlobe.com started moving behind its paywall last month after a five-week trial, and Moriarty says next steps will include the relaunching of Boston.com – with real-time Twitter commentary – a Google TV app, building a media lab and “other new things”.

“Both sites work side-by-side and people move across and share, using the flexibility of Méthode,” he says. “This enables us to pull news and big stories across to build numbers for advertisers.”

While he admits it can be “a little schizophrenic” at times, he says, “We saw people’s behaviour, and thought there might be future in it.”

Peter Coleman