Navigating Wired.com & A Race Against Time

Navigating Wired.com

Wired.com's homepage

Wired.com's main navigation bar, unlike many magazine's websites, sites nearly two-thirds of the way down the page when you first land on the homepage. The navigation bar includes the following pages: Subscribe, Sections, Blogs, Reviews, Video, How-tos, and Magazine. I think there's a lot to be said by their decision to place "Subscribe" and "Magazine" on either ends of their navigation bar; I think we can all draw some similar conclusions on their intentions here.

Each tab on the site's main navigation bar contains several drop-down options. Overall, it seems like navigating your way through each of these is pretty intuitive. The drop-down options provide plenty of information to allow the browser to decide which page to browse next. 

Wired.com's "Magazine" section's homepage

As I've mentioned before, the site's magazine page is especially intuitive because its content mimics the content of the current print issue. Navigation on this page is set up is completely different than that of the other sections of the site, but nonetheless just as straight-forward and easy to follow.       

Each section of Wired's website is somewhat unique from one another in layout, given their contrast in content. The magazine and video sections are appropriately designed and organized to fit their detailed page content and features. The "sections" and "blog" pages, on the other hand, are much less visually compelling and more straight-forward, which makes searching for a particular item on these pages quick and painless.

  
A Race Against Time: The New York Times explains how digital magazines are hindered by long download times and uses Wired as its guinea pig

 Illustration by Nick Bilton/The New York Times

Last month, Nick Bilton of the The New York Times conducted an experiment. He raced the speed of Wired's iPad App download time against that of his own two feet to pick up a print copy of the issue at a nearby newsstand. The winner? See for yourself. Check out full article and a string of readers' comments here: A Race Between Digital and Print Magazines.

Screenshot of March 2011 issue's cover from Wired's iPad App

Daily Elements of Wired's Home Page

As I continue to examine Wired.com regularly, it becomes more and more clear just how extensive the magazine's online content really is. The website is constantly being updated with new blogs, vidcasts and all kinds of web exclusive content for the site.

One particular content item on their homepage that changes daily seems to be the items above the menu bar. This content can vary from blog posts to photo galleries. It seems like the reason these stories play such a dominant role on the website's homepage is to not only encourage viewers to see these new items first, but also because the pieces that appear on this website's "top fold" seem to best exemplify this magazine's readers and what kinds of stories these readers look to Wired for.

The website also regularly updates its other sections, especially, the video and blogs, what appear to be two very popular aspects of the magazine's website. (However, I'd be interested to find more research and statistics to verify this.)

Headline Writing: Print vs. Web

Wired cover, September 2010 issue.

In this comparison, we can see where the clever, attention-grabbing headlines take a new shape when found on the Web. In all of the following cases, you'll see that none of headlines for any of the February issue's major feature stories appear with the same headline on the Web. Instead, these headlines take a more detailed, informational form. Here are some examples:


1. "Crime Organized" (Print) vs. "Organized Crime: The Largest Social Network" (Web)

2. "Easy Money" (Print) vs. "Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code" (Web)

3. "Check Out My Fauxrari" (Print) vs. "Counterfeit Car Maker Cranks Out Porsches and Fauxraris" (Web)

4. "The Flesh Trade" (Print) vs. "How Tech Tools Transformed New York's Sex Trade" (Web)

Examining the transformation of print-to-web headlines for each of these features shows us exactly what the Web headline's primary function is: SEO, or search engine optimization. These headlines take a more descriptive and informative tone in order to achieve this. The more possible terms from a headline that could appear in the search engine, the better. On another note, on the homepage of the magazine's website, these headlines have to fend for themselves. They don't have the luxury of sitting pretty next to a captivating illustration or a powerful photograph, but instead, the headlines actually compete directly against one another. See what I mean when you examine Wired.com's homepage here and the magazine section here.

Wired on the Web

Magazines Across Platforms: Print/Web Analysis of Wired Magazine

The mission is simple: to analyze and assess the print publication and Web platform content for the magazine. I'll be taking a close look at everything from cross-promotion, headline writing, multimedia features, interaction with readers and so on. I look forward to examining how such a progressive magazine utilizes its many platforms, including the iPad to promote its content and of course the Wired brand.

Wired's cross-promotion between print and Web content

For the Feb. 2011 issue of Wired, I examined the cross-promotion of the print magazine and Wired.com. I discovered that while Wired.com promotes the current issue's cover and feature through its own 'Magazine' tab on the website, the print version promotes its website and online content merely through a page called 'Wired Insider' – a small section for promotions, special offers and events related to the magazine. I was surprised to see such little Web promotion in the print version. It seems like without a page devoted to the promotion of Wired.com, it seems unlikely that readers will find their more subtle promotions hidden within the 'Wired Insider' section. It seems that what's somewhat more apparent in the print magazine is the promotion of the Wired iPad app. Included at the end of an article in the Feb. 2011 issue (the article was "Most Dangerous Object in the Office This Month: Mushroom Box Mini Growing System") appeared an 'iPad Extra' that read, "To see the system in action, download Wired from the iTunes Store." The iPad promotions on both website and print seem to work well- they're sleek, attractive and engaging, but they do seem to lack promotion of the web in the magazine, or at least in the Feb. 2011 issue, The Underworld Issue. Seeing such little online content promotion in this issue made me wonder if maybe the magazine has shifted gears and decided to devote their promoting to the magazine's iPad app instead. I would be interested to see if this seems to be the case through looking at some back issues from the past few years.