National Geographic Magazine Website Review

National Geographic magazine's website

Let me start by saying that this is my first blog post—ever—on anything! I'm pretty excited about it, since I get to write about one of my favorite magazines.

It's hard to be critical of National Geographic magazine or its online version. Stunning photography. Fascinating stories. Topics that matter. This is the legacy of publishing excellence I grew up with, as did many long before me (since 1888).

As I child, I used to play National Geographic editor. I'd spin my globe, point to a country and pretend to send a team on assignment there. My parents kept a stack of old issues that I loved to look through. One of the most memorable stories I read as a kid was about the eruption of Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980. And it was during the same month 30 years later that I found myself visiting the magazine's website with the intention of having a more critical eye.

I found a familiar topic: Mount St. Helens' eruption. The coverage was about the recovery of the area 30 years after the blast. It's fun to see how the magazine can now cover a topic using a variety of media—how the print coverage translated to the Web with a video featuring commentary by NGM editor Chris Johns, an interactive timeline, a slideshow and an archival story from the January 1981 issue. You get everything from the print magazine and so much more.

Rich, relevant, credible multimedia content—that's what you need to run a successful magazine website. But in a medium that's constantly evolving, there are always ways to improve and expand, no matter who you are. So I'll break this evaluation down into the assigned categories.

Strength of Content: 10
A perfect 10 is no surprise here. The magazine site has quality blogs, interactive content (quizzes, user photo submissions, voting on photos, jigsaw puzzle generator, maps and more), features, videos, and photography/slideshows. Users can even create and share some of these items. GeoPedia is where big topics are defined, and it links to relevant content within the magazine site. There's also a section called Follow Up that gathers content about environmental consciousness. Content-wise and search-wise, these groupings are a great idea.

Ease of Use and Navigation: 8
It's easy to navigate the magazine "microsite" and access what you want to find. However, there's a lot more on nationalgeographic.com as a whole (including other magazines and TV). You have to pay attention, so that you click on Photography within the magazine site and not somewhere else, as similar subject headings appear horizontally across the top of the page in three rows. It might be helpful if a visitor could choose to hide those rows when viewing the magazine. As both a reader and an editor, I'd like to have the magazine take up the entire space "above the fold." The search function works well: I recently used it to fact-check the spellings of some lesser-known pyramids in Egypt.

Use of New Technology: 9
The site itself, as discussed under Strength of Content, has good interactive features. Click here and here for info about the iPad version of the magazine (which I actually didn't see promoted anywhere on the mag site). And here for a few comments from David Griffin, executive editor for electronic publishing.

Design and Layout: 9
The large, striking photos and their placement and rotation work well. I think the magazine deserves the entire "above the fold" space. The option to hide the other navigation bars might work if ad time/space isn't an issue. That said, the ads are unobtrusive. They blend in well, since they're for other National Geographic products.

Level of Social Media Sophistication: 9
From what I can tell, the magazine itself isn't on Facebook, Twitter, etc., but you can follow National Geographic as a whole entity on these sites. The magazine's My Shot allows users to have their own National Geographic Web page, where you can create and share albums, puzzles and games based on photos you upload. The magazine has frequent blog posts with images and infographics. There are about four or five a week. Some of the posts get a lot of user comments. The widgets, My Shot, wallpaper, etc. allow users to personalize their experience and develop a connection with the magazine site and each other.

Overall Rating: 45 of 50

Posted By: Annie Ferguson