Trinity Mirror to relaunch all its Scottish local websites

The Hamilton Advertiser has become the first Trinity Mirror title to relaunch as part of the group's plan to more closely ally all 17 of its regional Scottish sites with their local newspapers.

Hamiltonadvertiser.co.uk, which is published by Trinity's Scottish division Scottish and Universal Newspapers (S&UN), has been created as a direct companion site to its newspaper namesake.

Previously, all web content from the newspaper was only available through the umbrella site icLanarkshire.

The group's 16 other local titles in Scotland will relaunched throughout the year.

Several of Trinity's titles in England including Middlesborough's Evening Gazette, the Birmingham Mail and Liverpool Echo having already made the switch to be more closely associated with the printed edition.

The Hamilton site, which was soft launched three weeks ago, has already shown a growth in traffic, John Hutcheson, S&UN's online editor, told Journalism.co.uk.

"We've got 17 titles each with really strong brands in their communities. The old ic website probably didn't build on those brands in the way that these can - people didn't register that this was the Hamilton Advertiser site," said Hutcheson, who will oversee the relaunch of all the websites.

"Now that it's got the masthead it's instantly recognisable and it maintains a connection with the readers."

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