In late December, Packaging World magazine launched its third-generation Web site, Packaging World Interactive.
Making it faster and easier to search five years' worth of back issues by keywords was our number one priority in redesigning the site. The benefits of the new site can be broken down as follows:
NEW CAPABILITIES
• "Hot topic" summary pages. Want to keep up with the latest in beer in plastic? Always on the lookout for manual, semi-automatic or entry-level packaging equipment? Interested in keeping up with Packaging and the Internet? We now publish a dedicated web page for each of the above topics consisting of everything we've ever published on that topic. Want more info on a topic you don't see? Tell us about it.
• Auto notification. Want to be notified when we publish new articles on a "hot topics" page of interest to you? Sign up for automatic e-mail notification and we'll contact you only when we've published something on the topic you've selected.
• Frequent updates. Packaging World will continually update our "In the news" section on the home page with important articles from a recent issue or breaking news.
• Web-based reader service. Stop wasting time circling that bingo card! Use our Express Web-based reader-service to request more information from companies you've read about in PW, regardless of whether you saw them in an article or an advertisement. They can receive your request in as little as 24 hours or sooner, and follow it up much faster.
IMPROVEMENTS
• Same-page searching from anywhere in the site. You can search our five-year editorial archive of every story we've ever published since December 1994. No longer do you have to click the BACK button on your browser to conduct a new search.
• One-click searching. If you're looking for a specific type of packaging machine or material, let us do the search for you. Try our QuickSearch technology, which consists of an automated search on each major category of packaging machinery or materials. Each QuickSearch was painstakingly hand-tuned by a PW editor to yield the highest number of relevant results while minimizing non-relevant articles.
• Faster search speed. We've upgraded our site to run on state-of-the-art hardware with lots of RAM and fast hard drives to boost search speed.
• More accurate search results. Most search engines are not fine-tuned to handle packaging terminology, including many packaging sites. PW editors spent months working closely with our programmers to make sure that when you type in your search criteria, you receive a list of articles you're looking for and little more. It's this extra attention to quality that distinguishes our site from others.
• No date restrictions. You no longer have to specify the date range in advance. And there is no longer a 200-article limit. The site displays all the articles that match your search criteria, no matter how many, broken up into convenient groups of 30 per page.
• No confusing boolean searches. To increase search accuracy, the search engine defaults to search for the exact phrase that you type in. However, you can type in multiple words and search for articles that contain all the words or any of the words without having to learn confusing "and/or" terminonology.
• Better organized search results. We break down search results into feature articles, short news articles and product reviews, so you can hone in on what you want.
COMING SOON
• Comprehensive jobs section. Looking for a job? Looking to higher someone for a job? We'll soon have one of the most comprehensive jobs sections available. Coming early 2000.
• Used equipment marketplace. Packaging World has teamed up with iMark.com, the leading used equipment marketplace to create a packaging-focused equipment marketplace with over 1ꯠ used packaging equipment listings from dealers all over the U.S.A.
• Buyer's guide. Packaging World is developing a directory of packaging suppliers. We'll combine state-of-the-art technology with good old-fashioned editing to deliver one of the finest and most accurate directories on the Web.
• More automatic e-mail notification. We will be looking at expanding this popular feature to other topics besides the five "hot topics" indicated on the home page.
• More hot topics pages. Packaging World editors will be continually adding topic-specific pages to the site to give you laser-precision coverage of the areas that are specific to your job.
For packaging suppliers, a variety of Web advertising opportunities are available.
If you have questions about using our Web site, please let us know.
