Part of a unit (Web Communications) I am currently studying at University I had to complete a website comparative analysis essay, I decided to choose two magazines to compare and look at the different features in which they differ. Looking at women’s magazine, Look’s website and men’s magazine, Men’s Health website below, provides a more in-depth analysis…
The internet in present times has impacted our lives hugely, especially for journalism as this was originally all on paper. However, most aspects of journalism can now be accessed online, such as magazines. Although it may not give the audience its full content it can provide a substantial amount of information that the paper version offers too. Looking at Look magazine’s website (www.look.co.uk) and Men’s Health magazine’s website (www.menshealth.co.uk) it became apparent the differences they had between each other. Look magazine’s website has the target audience for women already differentiating from the Men’s Health website which is targeted at men. Look magazine is based on fashion, beauty and shopping, and the website has coverage of all these aspects. The target audience would be women aged late teens to early thirties with interests in fashion, beauty and shopping. Whereas Men’s Health is directed at men from the age of early twenties to mid forties, showing already a broader scale of men involved. They also have the interest of health, fitness, sport and style, which is generally what the website offers. McCracken and Wolfe (2004, pg 44) believe that the “purpose of a website is to help people do things”, which hopefully both these websites should fulfil.
To find Look magazine’s website, it seemed easy enough to use a search engine, however this also helped determine the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) of the website. When using Google (www.google.co.uk) Look appeared in the first four listings of the results all which were relevant to the website. The first result taking the user straight to the homepage, proving that the website has already got good expectations, for it to be one of the first results to appear on a search engine. Yet, when using Yahoo(www.yahoo.co.uk) as a search engine it only showed one listing that was appropriate, although it was the first one and did lead straight to the home page. A sponsored result was also shown, advertising a subscription to Look’s magazine, which means Look has used Yahoo to their full advantage to then advertise. On the other hand, Men’s Health magazine’s website seemed like it has a decrease in popularity compared to Look. The SEO for Google and Yahoo for Men’s Health were like Look, the first website; however there was also an American version of the website that could confuse the user as the only thing showing the difference was “.com” or “.co.uk”. This could seem that Look’s magazine could appear to be a well recognised website resulting with more links.
The layout of Look magazine’s home page is very structured and organised making it easier for the audience to read the website and know where everything is. Like the magazine the website contained a lot of pictures being more descriptive through images rather than text as the images take up most of the space on the website. However, this seems appropriate because for subjects like fashion images are always better to look at. The navigation bar was easily accessible making the usability easier for the user. However, there were no drop-down menus or sub-categories to give the user more options, which could restrict the user as to what they are viewing and make them feel like they are limited. Yet, the website has a lot to offer because there are hyperlinks within their articles, although not all of them worked showing a failure in the website and leading to disappointment for the user as they cannot access what they want. Even, Rosenfeld (1998, pg 43) warns that if the link is buried in the middle of a paragraph, it could get lost which means these hyperlinks may not necessarily be a good idea, however for Look they are placed in appropriate places. The colours used on the website are very neutral with a white background and black font, however this works as the logo is Pink and there is also lots of different colourful pictures on the website, which means the colours would not contradict each other and look better for the user.
On the other hand, Men’s Health magazine’s website seemed like it took a very different approach to Look’s. When accessing the website it seemed a lot different from Look’s as there was a lot of grey space used which seemed like it is just there to fill the page up and because it is grey it makes the page look boring and not appealing for the user. A good aspect of the website was a horizontal scroll bar being used to access different features within the website and pictures were used to illustrate the feature, so the user can have more of an idea as to what it is about and also have easy access to the feature. It seems like Men’s Health have decided to take a bolder approach to their website and make the user catch their eye on a feature rather than the layout of the website, this could have the connotation of men being over powering and wanting to be more dominant over the user.
Unlike Look’s website, Men’s Health have used sub categories within their menu bar, this is very useful for the reader as it gives more in-depth options for them to choose from and to increase the usability of these categories easily. In each page there is a “highlights” box taking the user to the “best bits” ,essentially this is an opportunity to show their website off and make the website worthwhile for the user, which Men’s Health does as each part seems relevant and appropriate as to what is going on at this present time. Men’s Health also utilise the information they display to benefit the user which means it is very useful and appealing to them. Which Robertson (2001, pg 59 cited in McCracken and Wolfe, 2004) says that the information on a website needs to be “useful and meaningful” for the website to be a success, which both Men’s Health and Look magazine both provide.
A slideshow of pictures is the first feature that most users would recognise on Look’s magazine and they have used this to incorporate their main stories so that the user can then access them from that slideshow making it trouble-free for them and more appealing. Multimedia is well used on this website as there is a separate page for both a video and pictures that the user can view. Byrd (2001, pg 191 cited in McCracken and Wolfe 2004) suggests that using videos is a good medium to use as people watch television on average four hours a day, and both websites offer this. It also makes the website more interactive and engaging for the user. The use of social network sites such as Facebook (www.facebook.com) and Twitter (www.twitter.com) have been used on the website to be able to keep in contact with the audience as they can then give their opinion on what Look has published. On the other hand, to officially contact Look magazine they haven’t made this the easiest feature to access as this is in very small font and featured at the very bottom of the site, which not everyone would be able to notice.
Unlike Look, Men’s Health’s website doesn’t include as much multimedia, it still has a page for videos but there are no galleries of photos. There are plenty used in and amongst features and this seems to be enough because there are so many there doesn’t need to be another page that is specified on pictures. Nielsen (1997) could see the use of pictures as a good feature to have as he says that “web users often scan a page”, so with pictures the user would know what they’re looking at and they don’t need to read any information. A downfall for the site is that there is no social network sites associated with the website making it seem that the communication with the user is limited because there is a forum where users can socialise between themselves, which is good, however Men’s Health could take it further and increase their audience by using social networking sites, like Look has done.
McCracken and Wolfe (2004, pg 37) believe that “the failings of many websites can be attributed to creators who assumed that their users had the same background and experiences that they did.” However, for these websites they are magazines with specific interests and therefore to fully understand the users they need to share the same interests to make the website work. Which both these websites do as they contain the correct information that fulfils the users needs. However, to conclude how effective these websites are and how good their usability is, proves to be more successful for Men’s Health in the terms that all links work, however they fail to use all space on their website to their advantage. Whereas, Look uses all the right spacing for their website to appeal to their user and keeps good interaction with the user, yet the failure can be that not all links always work, which then lets the site down. From this it demonstrates that even, big names within the journalism industry such as Look and Men’s Health still can not get an excellent website that is user friendly for their audiences.
References
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Newman, A. 2007. Men’s Health Magazine. Hearst Digital. Available from: http://www.menshealth.co.uk/ (Accessed on 28th November 2010)
Nielsen, J. 1997. Search and You May Find. Alertbox. Available from: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9707b.html (Accessed on 29th November 2010)
Nielsen. J. 1997. How Users Read On The Web. Alertbox. Available from: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html (Accessed on 29th November 2010)
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Daisy Cronin 