Researching Similar Products - Magazine Websites

To conclude my research on similar products I have chosen to research Magazine Websites as it would be a product I will be creating in my ancillary task. Magazine Websites are very today with the internet expanding at the rate it is. Most reasonably well known Magazines now have Websites which help advertise and show extra content for their magazine. Websites allow magazines to extend their advertising to the internet instead of just billboard advertisements and word of mouth. I will be researching two pages of each website as that is the amount I am required for my ancillary.

Exposed Magazine

Home Page

News Page

Conclusion

Overall I believe that Exposed's Website is a good but not amazing Magazine Website. I found the initial home page was a good representation of the magazine as it followed all the same house style and graphics. It also had easy navigation and it was clear to see the different categories which Exposed Covers such as News, Music, Movies, Fashion, Food and Drink and more. With these categories however it shows that Exposed may have gone too far in what it is trying to achieve, most regional magazines don't cover these categories in such detail therefore it may mislead the reader into believing that it is not a regional magazine and instead an entertainment/music magazine. The news webpage which I also looked into however wasn't really as good as the home page. The webpage was very similar to the home page with the small images and description beneath, however the webpage seemed very bland and nothing really stood out. The most disappointing of Exposed's Website is probably the amount of content on the side such as the Spotify Playlist and Soundcloud links, the content seemed very cramped and unneeded which added clutter to the website which I found off putting. When I design my Website I will make sure it is much more simple than this.

Active8 Magazine

Home Page

Company Background Page

Conclusion

The webpage which Heron Publication offers for Active8 readers is much more of an informative basic website than the website which Exposed offers. Active8 is a very stripped back basic website which doesn't consist of much interactive content like Exposed does. Even though there is not much to offer within Active8s website I feel that it does a good job in being an informative website for the magazine. It is worth considering that the reason Active8 is an effective website in what it does is because it doesn't need to be a big entertainment based website, if the website was like Exposed with the music videos and Spotify playlists it wouldn't be a good representation of what the magazine is actually like. I feel the key with Magazine websites is that they should represent what the magazine is really like, if not this can lead to confusion and disappointment when people expect a magazine to be similar to the website they are viewing.

How this affects my product

By me researching these websites it has shown me two completely different types of magazine websites. The basic, information based website (Active8) and the heavy on content interactive website (Exposed). I feel for my magazine website it would be suitable for me to use aspects of both, it needs to contain information but also needs to be a bit more pleasing for the eye like Exposed.