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Online Journalism News

"A strong brand helps moving online, but it doesn't guarantee success"

Posted: 11/09/06 By: Oliver Luft
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David Witcomb is the business development manager of hellomagazine.com. Here he writes about launching the world-famous brand online and appealing to a new readership.

Hellomagazine.com was launched because there was a gap in the market in 2001 for regularly updated celebrity news online.

No one was doing it in the HELLO! style and since the magazine had an established brand in the UK, the logical step was to take it online.

The decision to make the site a celebrity news service was made to differentiate it from the magazine, to bring a fresh audience to the brand.

Some people still assume that hellomagazine.com is just the magazine online, duplication of content, cannibalising of existing content, etc.

That is a hurdle we still need to get over. By educating people of the distinction and difference in content, and the value of having the brand online, the site will continue to grow independently.

The magazine is very much feature-based with its news elements secondary. By focusing on becoming a destination site for celebrity news in the UK, we were able to create a niche for it right from the start.

A strong brand helps when moving online, but it's not a given that it will succeed.

Some of hellomagazine.com's online competitors are the same as those of the magazine. However, the site faces fiercer competition from brands that are online only.

Many ISPs and other sites had celebrity news that would have a remark or comment thrown in for good measure.

Hellomagazine.com went down the path of becoming a reliable source of just news in the UK and some of our competitors looked at what we were doing and followed our lead.

The key for success taking a magazine online is to think about making the site valuable for a potentially brand new audience, and how to expand over the long term while generating significant revenue.

Many publishers fear readership levels dropping offline because an online site exists. Both media can exist at the same time as long as there is a realisation that a general repetition of content will not work.

Hellomagazine.com's main age group is a younger one than that of the magazine. It's the 20-35 age group that visit the site the most. There are also a large percentage of users who are well educated and affluent.

Nor is our readership shy when it comes to buying on the internet; recent research shows over 86 per cent have purchased something online over the past six months. It's also not a real surprise to reveal that more than 90 per cent of our users are women.

As more traditional magazine publishers become web savvy, it will be interesting to see how they respond to the challenges of online publishers moving into their territory.

I have to admit to being a sucker for getting the printed edition of my favourite magazines in my hands, but those who I read that have made a successful transition online include nme.com, and empireonline.com.

Nme.com has a clean, user-friendly site and it performs well in terms of revenue. Empireonline.com has a lot of content, but it's presented in a way that it never begins to bore you. It also has a nice crossover with magazine readers via the Empire Extra section.

These are example of those who have bridged the divide, but whether the fusion of online and offline publishers will make traditional magazine publishers morph into different beasts altogether, only time will tell.

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