When a magazine is not a magazine

Magazines and the internet have had a rocky relationship.

Take women’s mags, the biggest-selling sector after TV guides. A fifth of British women will walk all the way to the newsagent and fork out three quid a month for one. But put them online – the same content there on your screen, free of charge - and we’d all rather watch Sex and the City instead.

After listening to a talk by the very affable Kim Hollamby, head of online at IPC, it seems to me the problem seems is conceptual, rather than technical.

You don’t speed-read a lifestyle mag at your desk or over a morning espresso. Leafing through the fragrant glossy pages is a pleasure reserved for lazy afternoons or stolen hours in bed. It’s not a sensation which translates to the web.

So the key to successful magazine website is that it’s not just a magazine online.

“Its different content which is complementary”, is Hollamby's verdict.

Rather than a site which is a poster for it's printed namesake, he says publishers need to exploit the web’s unique advantages. Interactivity is the main draw, allowing readers to talk to the editors and to each other. Also online content could, and should, be updated daily in bitesize web-friendly morsels (see last post).

For example, a quick peruse of online Vogue (a Conde Nast one, apologies) gives us news updates, video clips and shopping options. If your shoes unexpectedly go out of fashion, rest assured you will have been informed before cocktail hour.

Readers are drawn in to a website by loyalty to a brand name they trust. If it gives them something continually different, they will return, for the same reason they trawl to the newsstands every month.

IPC learned this lesson to their cost with the failure of beme.com, launched at the crest of the dotcom tidal wave. The execs thought it was everything a gal could want – fashion, gossip, life guidance - at the click of a mouse. But it folded within months. Its stand-alone team had no ready-made audience.

Now ironically, websites' coffers are filled by teaching the old readers new tricks. The challenge is creating a new sensation which does not require their undivided attention.

The advantage for execs and feature writers is that it doesn’t compete with the print version. What does it mean for us, the readers? We’ll still be trotting down to the newsagent for our monthly fix.

Kim Hollamby spoke at Cardiff Journalism school on 10.11.05