The new digital face of dictionaries

ELT_34045_CDO_scd_07_16-ImgPost-3_1200x800You might have noticed that the Cambridge Dictionaries Online website is looking a bit different this morning as we have rolled out the new design to all devices.

What’s different?

Pretty much everything has changed, if you consider the visual impact of the site and its ease of use.  We have renamed Cambridge Dictionaries Online to simply Cambridge Dictionary, and its new strapline “Make your words meaningful” is an open invitation to explore the richness of the site’s resources: from definitions and grammar to synonyms and real-life examples. We have also given the site a brand new visual identity including the logo with Cambridge University shield, which now position the site in a direct relationship with the Cambridge English family of products.

It has taken an intense 4 months to steer the project from brief to delivery, and an endless amount of tweaks to the interface in order to ensure that all design elements are clear and easy to navigate. In making this change, the team kept the user at the heart of the project making sure that all decisions were based on data and any assumptions were validated through continuous testing.

Your reaction

During the 3 weeks of beta testing in June, we invited a percentage of site visitors to view the new design and share their comments through a feedback button. This gave us a chance to iron out any inconsistencies, fix bugs and eliminate major problems before going live. To our delight, 91% of users told us that the new design met their needs and 70% found it extremely appealing or very appealing. As an extra step towards making the site fully optimised, we have planned a series of usability tests, where we’ll observe and listen to real customers as they use the site and tell us about their experience.

Did you know?

With 16 million monthly active users, Cambridge Dictionary is Cambridge University Press’s most visited website and one of the top 1,000 Alexa-ranked websites worldwide. It accounts for as many as 77% of visits to the cambridge.org domain and its Facebook community is now over 2 million strong.

32 thoughts on “The new digital face of dictionaries

  1. Rosemeri Bento dos Santos

    For me each day it’s better.I’m an English teacher who loved his dictionary and everything you do.I also use and share lots of things you post with my students.I ‘m glad to have the opportunity to use your awesone job.

  2. Tatiana Balandina

    Thanks a lot for everything you do for us! Visiting Cambridge site is a kind of addiction for me. But it’s great!

  3. Ansauro

    The new page is nicer to look at than the old one, but when you try to print it this is what you get (excerpt):

    What’s different?

    `Pretty much(http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/pretty-much) everything has changed,If you consider the visual impact (http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/ english//impact) of the site and its ease of use. We have renamed Cambridge Dictionaties Online to simplify Cambridge Dictionary, and its new strapline (http://dictionary.cambridge.org//dictionary/english//strapline) “Make your words meaningful” is an open invitation to explore the richness of the sites’s resources from definitions and grammar (http://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/) to synonyms and real-life examples,…’

    A complete hotchpotch between text and path links. Please, try to fix the new page in order that we can carry on printng it flawlessly as before.
    Ansauro

      1. Ansauro

        This blog page.
        Please,try to print this page yourself and see what happens. I don’t know whether this is intended or not.
        Before the blog update,I had no difficulty in printing the page without any URLs,only the text as shown in the blog page.

  4. Pingback: The new digital face of dictionaries – englishmoreformal

  5. Oleg Markin

    I used to print posts at this site, so I repeat the Ansauro’s question above: what has happened to printing of blog pages. Please look at the Firefox-produced view

    https://yadi.sk/i/1veMyxp8tA6Ld

    — half a page is empty plus those visible URLs for linked words…
    Would you please fix that. By the way, I couldn’t continue the Ansauro’s thread because there is no ‘reply’ button in the last ( third! ) comment at that thread.

    1. Ansauro

      Hi Oleg,
      It seems that Cambridge have put all our comments out of their mind. As of today (15.07.2016),I have not got a thoughtful answer to my querry, nor have you.
      Regards.

      1. Hi Oleg and Ansauro, apologies for the lack of response on this issue, we will look into it as a matter of urgency. The blog is still hosted in WordPress, only the theme has changed so I think it must be a feature of the new theme, hopefully something that can be removed.

      2. Oleg Markin

        Thanks a lot — this time I see professionals. Now, it’s fine if not to pay attention to the empty right part of pages.

        https://yadi.sk/i/E62V43MdtS3uw

        However, the latter issue is not that important since, having printed a post, I’m also getting some blank space to draw miniatures of beautiful women on the right, as A.S. Pushkin used to do 🙂

        Please try to fix this also, if possible. I’ll wait for a couple of weeks and then finally print those posts published after the site has changed. I’m really grateful for your work.

      3. Hi Oleg and Ansauro, I’ve just made changes to the CSS that should remove the wide margin on the right when you print. Please could you check and let me know if te blog is now printing OK for you?

      4. Oleg Markin

        Now it looks as perfect as before the site transformation, this is good news for me, thank you very much, best regards.

  6. Yordan Naydenov

    Hello!
    How to remove a button “Feedback”. I use Google Chrome browser. I’ve already done a survey, but button still appears on the screen. It’s boring.

    1. Thank you, we hadn’t spotted this – I’ll report it to the developers. The r at the end of the pronunciation should be superscript, showing that it is only pronounced when the next word starts with a vowel (eg as in ‘My teacher is very good’).

  7. Ansauro

    Hi,
    Thank you very much for your interest in solving the blog page printing issue.This time,you nailed the problem down,except for the large blank right margin which still remains a waste of useful space that can be allocated to text. Please,keep on trying to get rid of it and the page will look like it did before the update.

      1. Ansauro

        Hi,
        After spending a week on vacation, It is my pleasure to inform you that your blog printing problem is definitely done away with. I wholeheartedly appreciate your interest in solving the issue.Thanks a lot.

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