A friend of ours was approached recently by the editor of a popular magazine with this request (excuse me while I paraphrase some paraphrasing here): if someone could find a way to deliver the “magic” of magazines in an online format that isn’t PDF or proprietary he would beat a path to their door.

Why would you want to bring the “magic” of something else to something that’s already as magical as the Web? What exactly is the content you’re delivering and how is it presented? That’s the real question. Is it compelling? Is it presented in the best light considering your target audience and the medium?

You can think of the magazine reader as a bit of a captive audience, essentially their eyes are going to be on your magazine and your magazine alone for a particular amount of time (sitting in an airport waiting on a plane, on bus or train, etc.). They sit down get comfortable and give your publication their undivided attention. Longer, less tightly focused, and targeted articles work when your audience is captive, or semi-captive.

Online periodicals are a totally different ball game. If your articles are too long or meandering or your design and layout is annoying, cryptic, or difficult to navigate the user is one click away from going somewhere else or doing something else, playing a game, checking their email, chatting on IM, or even getting up and reading a magazine.

It’s a sad state of affairs but the average Internet user is 1000 places at once, that’s just a simple fact and it’s not going to change any time soon, if anything, it will only get worse.

Trying to force the the online experience to be more like a print magazine seems sort of unrealistic. The online experience already has so much to offer. Why try to work against it when working with it makes more sense?

The solution isn’t going to be technology or delivery method, it’s the substance in the content and the way that content is presented that will captivate audiences. Shifting the focus back on to the content puts the responsibility squarely on the authors and editors, where it should be, not the technology. The technology isn’t broken but the understanding of how the technology changes the audience may be.

Just because Internet users aren’t reacting to your content the way you think they should doesn’t mean the technology or the audience is at fault. Take a look at how your site is organized, is your layout sensible, is your content geared toward the medium or are you trying to gear the medium towards your content?

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 8th, 2006 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.