172: 5 ways to improve digital magazines

One reason we still have print magazines is that digital magazines aren’t that good

To some people it’s a mystery why print magazines still exist. Weren’t they supposed to have been displaced by digital — a long time ago?

Bo Sacks distributed an article on that topic, which I’ll link below.

I’ve written before about the various ways print can be better than digital, and I’ll link to some of those articles, but given the fact that the economics of print magazine publishing are awful and getting worse, the more important question is what can digital publishers learn from print. IOW, if the budget is telling you to get more people to switch to digital, make digital better!

In that spirit, I’ll mention five things that I think are better about print publications, and some possible ways to do something analogous in digital. I say “analogous,” by the way, because I’m not advocating for skeuomorphs — where some print feature is ham-handedly duplicated online, like the pretend sound of a page turning. Those things are silly.

#1 — A print magazine has ads, but they don’t hover over the text and get in your way the way they do online. You don’t have to x out of them so you can see the article. Ideally, they’re on a page by themself. I.e., there’s a page with an article, and a page with an ad. The ad doesn’t usually crowd out the text.

Recommendation: Don’t allow ads to interfere with the reading experience. Design your digital magazine for the reader first, then for the advertiser.

#2 — A print magazine doesn’t beep at you while you’re reading. It doesn’t try to distract you.

Recommendation: Make it easy for the reader to turn off notifications while reading your digital magazine, and don’t use pop-ups or anything like them.

#3 — A magazine is random access. You can start at the back if you like. You can flip pages. You can open to the middle.

Recommendation: Focus on easy navigation, create something like “flipping pages,” and make it possible to skip many pages at a time — rather than, for example, having to swipe for every new page.

#4 — The ads in the magazine are part of the experience. When I was a kid, my brother got some magazine simply to see all the little ads on the last few pages. You know, ads to mail order sea monkeys, or slides for your microscope, or x-ray glasses.

As an adult, it’s nice to see ads that are related to the topic. If it’s a boat magazine, I want to see all the cool new boats. If it’s a hunting magazine, I want to see what’s new in crossbows. That’s part of the appeal.

Recommendation: Change the way you think of ads. Some people watch the SuperBowl just to see the commercials. Strive to make ads a welcome part of the e-magazine experience rather than an annoyance.

#5 — You can leave a magazine open to a particular page. “Hey honey, check out that article on the coffee table” makes sense because the magazine is laying there, open to page 7.

You can also dog ear a magazine, or even cut out a page.

Recommendation: Make it easy to remember where you are, to bookmark pages, and to share pages.

Print does some things better than digital, and vice versa. But there’s no reason why digital can’t catch up.

Everything I’ve said here is just my opinion, and a few of the things I like about magazines.

Ask your print audience what they like. And don’t do something cheap and easy so you can say, “Oh yeah, we do that” — the way some resorts will install a tiny little ice-skating rink just so they can say they have one.

Think about the print experience, and why people like the things that they like. Don’t try to duplicate it exactly, but think creatively about how to fulfill that need in a digital environment.

Also, don’t think of your print subscribers as Neanderthals who can’t get with the program. They have reasons to like print. Learn from them.

Links

Magazines were supposed to die in the digital age. Why haven’t they?
https://theconversation.com/magazines-were-supposed-to-die-in-the-digital-age-why-havent-they-217371

I’m announcing the death of “the death of print”
https://krehbielgroup.com/2023/10/21/im-announcing-the-death-of-the-death-of-print/

You don’t have to be a Luddite to see the value in print
https://krehbielgroup.com/2023/10/11/you-dont-have-to-be-a-luddite-to-see-the-value-in-print/

We need to improve reader comprehension online
https://krehbielgroup.com/2024/01/02/we-need-to-improve-reader-comprehension-online/