Hot Press Scoops Website of the Year Award

Hot Press was among the big winners at the Irish Magazine Association Awards last night, with hotpress.com scooping the coveted Website of the Year prize.

The judges praised the quality of the website's new look, as well as the depth of its content and its superb interactive features – also noting the significant increases in traffic on the site. Hot Press has consistently shown the way in relation to its online presence, ranking among the most successful music and entertainment sites in Europe on a per capita basis.

"Having taken the Magazine of the Year mantle last year, this is exactly the double whammy that you want," said Hot Press marketing manager Mark Hogan. "We have developed hotpress.com in a number of really interesting ways over the past year, but we are constantly working on building additional features in. We have lots of plans which we will be rolling out over the coming months, which will offer members of hotpress.com an even better and more essential online experience."

Major developments on the site over the past year include the creation of a huge volume of original video material, shot specifically for hotpress.com. Among the highlights were the video interview with Chuck D in the Hot Press Chatroom at Electric Picnic, which went global, and The Rubberbandits' hilarious routines both in interview at the Electric Picnic and during the photo shoot for the Christmas cover of Hot Press – the video of which went live on hotpress.com yesterday.

The new look of the site impressed the judges.

"There is so much happening on hotpress.com that the biggest challenge is making sure that users can follow what's going on and access all of the features and elements smoothly and easily," Art Director and site designer Andrew Duffy said. "The brief was to create a new look that was was fresh, contemporary and, most importantly, easily navigable – but one which also complemented the redesign of the printed version of Hot Press which we undertook earlier in the year. It is great to have our success in all of these areas endorsed by the judges."

There has also been a very effective embedding of Twitter feeds as part of the news agenda on hotpress.com.

"The immediacy of Twitter is its great strength," said Hot Press news editor and deputy editor Stuart Clark. "The feed – which is permanently on the homepage – has enabled a really lively, on the spot updating from the trenches, wherever Hot Press people gather, which dovetails really well with the higher turnover of quality news stories which we have generated over the past year. It is a really effective new feature on the site, which is working exceptionally well."

Developments in the area of e-publishing are on going in other ways too.

"We'll be making an official announcement on the app front shortly," Hot Press editor Niall Stokes added, "with Hot Press becoming available for the iPad. It is going to add fantastic value for subscribers, as well as ensuring that the complete Hot Press experience is available simultaneously to people all over the world at the same time."

Watch this space.