Images
A photo spread in print does not always translate well online. The web gives you the opportunity to showcase great-quality photos, including those that had to be cut for space in the print edition. Always lead off your web articles with a great photo. The others should be included as a slideshow. If you embed photos in the article text, that translates to one page view for the entire article and all of the pictures. Instead, if a reader clicks through a slideshow, that's a pageview for every individual photo. Plus, the photos are larger and of better quality in a slideshow. There's no need to embed tiny little photos in online article text--sometimes this is a necessity for print, but having tons of "space" for photos is a major advantage of online content.
Article Length
By all means, publish an important feature story online, even if it's lengthy. You just need to make use of new ways to tell the story online. Package a longer feature into a slideshow, with photos, so the reader can click through as she reads and see a visual element on each page. Of course, this means more page views for you (and your advertisers). But it also means a more enjoyable experience for the reader -- who wants to scroll down for ages, constantly losing your place if you need to click into another tab for a minute or check your email? Using video is another new way to re-package feature stories online.
One Long Article in Print = Several Online
Sometimes, long articles can even be broken up into several separate online articles and packaged together as a slideshow. For example, a print article about the best spas in town includes separate headers for each spa reviewed. For the online version, make each spa review its own article and its own slide in a slideshow entitled "Best Spas", so readers see that the individual review is part of a larger package and continue to read more, even if they originally intended to check out just one spa. Same goes for restaurant lists or any "Top XYZ" list that your magazine publishes. This type of content has been the bread-and-butter of many city and regional magazines for years, and it is now proving to be extremely popular online content. If readers are looking for a good spa and read about three different options online in your slideshow, this way they'll hit three different page views -- plus more if you've got multiple photos of each spa to click through.
Tagging and Related Links
Two important final steps in creating an ideal article: always tag your articles and include links to related content at the bottom. This keeps readers clicking--when they finish an article they've found interesting, they'll likely want to read more on the topic. If you've included related links, you make it easy for them. Now they'll stay on your site rather than navigating away from it to find out more about the subject at hand. If you tag your content, you can create aggregates of similarly tagged articles, blog entries, videos and any other content types you may have. These aggregated pages are called Topics Pages and they will drive traffic throughout your site. In Metro Publisher these pages are created automatically. Search engines pay more attention to frequently updated sites. By building up and maintaining great topics pages, you increase your site's search relevance.
Check out our articles "Keep Readers Clicking" to learn more about these important online strategies.
Comments
Online articles should always conclude with fields for comments. Another major advantage of online vs. print is that the web allows readers to participate in the conversation. Directly encourage comments when you can, asking readers to share their feedback on the topic at hand or their own reviews of a restaurant, bar, store, or venue.
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