We are currently in the process of updating our website. The first of the changes in what we have dubbed “Stage 2C” went live last week.
The changes are not massive, but they all feed incrementally into making the site better for users. The most basic change that we made was an obvious one. We simply made the images on our website bigger. Both the listing pages and the main product pages now have larger images than before (about double the size).
Magazine Images in List
BBC Top Gear Magazine Subscription - Larger Image
Bit of a no brainer when you come to think of it. Magazines sell more on impulse than on anything else, and for the masses (this discounts the minority who come onto our site knowing exactly what they are looking for), the front cover of the magazine is what entices them to either click through to the product landing page or go elsewhere.
Most thumbnails of magazines are too small to allow any real engagement with the product. So, we have made them larger. The sacrifice is that fewer magazines fit within a single screen, but we think the trade off is an easy one to make. Scrolling down is not the end of the world, but having to strain to see our content is pretty bad.
The other change is the roll over state. When you now roll over a thumbnail, an enlarged floating image pops up. Again, the idea is that we make things more visual. For a company that is so dependent on visual stimuli, our website was until recently quite data heavy. There is still a massive amount of content, but hopefully now, it is easier to digest.
Sports Illustrated magazine subscription - floating image
Lots more changes are on their way. Our website is still a work in progress for us. We have less than 1% of the online mag market and we need to ramp this up. We therefore have to continue to experiment, adapt and iterate. Stay tuned for product videos, more rewarding review functionality, multiple images per product, and lots more.
I think it may have been mentioned here before, but your homepage lets things down a bit. Is that one of your planned updates? I am on a 512K connection at home and it took around 30 – 40 seconds just now for the whole Flash do-da to load up, maybe my connection is having a bad day though. When it has loaded, although it’s cute, it is not to the point and I don’t use it, there’s simply too much going on in it. Now with a homepage like magazine-group.co.uk’s though, I can see magazines, special offers and categories almost from the word go, all without having to click a button.
Also, I think your twitter and blog feeds on the homepage make it too text heavy (soooo yesterday!), plus they might be acting as a form of sales drain. In fact, I can scroll 2 screen’s worth of text and it looks a bit boring to be honest. Your twitter feed provides non-clickable links to new blog posts too, repeating what’s in the other column, but in a less friendly way. A nice shiny button to each of the blog and twitter sites would suffice, people will click if they are interested, and then fill the newly found free space with bigger magazine covers and specials, after all that’s what people are looking for when they hit the homepage, not links through to destinations where you aren’t selling anything per se.
Hey James – thanks for the feedback. All of your points are completely valid. The hard thing is that website design is such a subjective thing. A heap of people have said that they love the land of mags photo (that city scape is actually a photo – some think it a graphic).
I personally agree with your comments about the twitter feed – it definitely makes the home page too texty. We have had this showing for only a few weeks and is somewhat of an experiment. On the flip side, we have till now tried to steer clear of the overly commercial free set of steak knives. The site is not aimed to purely get you to transact. There is an element of community and content that we are trying to get across at the same time.
We have tried to differentiate our site from all the mainstream players, but perhaps that is why they have so much more market share than we do! We will keep on tinkering and trying new things, and people like you who take the time to provide such useful and considered commentary help us no end. Thanks once again… it might take a bit of time, but I am certain that your response will lead to real change.
Although you call it ‘Stage 2C’ we call it Revision 1811.