For the Record... Luxury's New World... Extreme Makeover...

EXTREME MAKEOVER: The last few months have been a cleaning house period for Glamour. The fashion title, which has seen large declines in newsstand and ad sales, unveiled a redesign in the September issue. Now it’s making over its Web site to include more updated daily content, additional bloggers and content from other Condé Nast fashion and beauty magazines.

Glamour.com’s makeover, to be launched at the end of August, comes as syndication deals with MSN and Yahoo.com, and the growing popularity of the site’s bloggers, including “Storked” writer Christine Coppa and assistant health editor Margarita Bertsos, have helped grow traffic. As of July, the site averaged 687,000 monthly unique visitors, or 55 percent more than the same period in 2007 and 10 million page views, or a 49 percent growth over 2007, according to internal figures. Around July 4, the site attracted more viewers than it did in the entire month of July two years prior, thanks to MSN featuring Glamour’s Summer Dos and Don’ts on its portal.

The purpose of revamping the site, said Cindi Leive, Glamour’s editor in chief, is to focus on the “four areas of ravenous interest for our readers” and “to get out of the Web site being the digital equivalent of the magazine.” The site will be organized around the main topics of fashion, beauty, sex and relationships and health. New features, news stories and blog posts will be updated throughout the day, with about 10 new stories in total across each subject. Glamour.com will also feature stories from other Condé titles, such as Allure and Self. Though glamour.com readers will be able to read entire stories pulled from other magazines, links back to the content’s original Web home will be included on glamour.com. With original content added to the site several times a day, only 10 to 15 percent of the site will be stories from the magazine.

Its existing bloggers on health, dating and fashion will be more prominently displayed on the site, and additional bloggers have also been hired. Former elle.com editor Tracey Lomrantz will blog about fashion, Sarah Jio will run a health blog, Vitamin G, and Joanna Goddard will pen a relationship blog, Smitten. Additionally, new editors have been hired to manage the expanded content — Susan Cernek, formerly fashion and beauty director for glam.com, will edit the fashion and beauty content while online lifestyle editor Lindsey Unterberger will handle sex and health content. — S.D.S.