IBT Media’s Newsweek and International Business Times are be redesigned online to focus on speed, legibility and user experience, as part of the global rebrand recently launched in the US.

The redesign is part of a company-wide move to retain, enhance and grow its readership across EMEA.

The Newsweek redesign will feature larger headlines and images with increased download speed, as well as more homepage articles, sticky navigation bars and social sharing with more room for integrated sponsorship. Video has been trialled over the last few months, with plans to grow this throughout the year.

“The clear, clean look of the redesign is great for readers and really makes the most of Newsweek’s superb images and graphics,” said Newsweek Europe editor Matt McAllester.

“By integrating advertising better we’ve improved the user experience online and our newly expanded newsroom is very excited about the possibilities offered by the new storytelling tools.”

The UK redesign of International Business Times, which launches today (1 February), also focuses on elegance and functionality, with longer “magazine” format feature stories, mobile and video optimised pages and improved social media sharing.

The video player has been placed higher up the page, with videos more integrated in to articles, with the intention to double video offering output in 2016.

“These upgraded digital properties are an important move for IBT Media as it continues to grow its global readership,” said IBT Media EMEA vice president of sales Jeremy Makin.

“The redesigns place ad effectiveness on a par with audience experience. We have ensured that the advertising blends harmoniously with the content and is both impactful, engaging and viewable,” he added.

The investment was made as programmatic revenues are reported to be up 85% year on year with 200 million unique users on IBT.co.uk during 2015 “We will continue to further develop our mix of solutions for advertisers, whether it be programmatic and direct, display or native content,” added Makin.

Further improvements are planned through IBT’s membership of the AMP programme, driven by Google.

Read our exclusive interview with IBT Media managing director for the UK and EMEA, Dev Pragad.