More and more magazines are moving into the mobile sphere with Glamour being the latest. The magazine recently launched a mobile app with the aim to increase readership and offer readers a multi-sensory experience.

Through the app users can buy the latest issue of Glamour magazine for $3.99 (an exact replica of the print edition) to read on their mobile device as well as stay up to date with the latest blog posts on the Glamour blog. The app also features exclusive content like extra photos and shopping information and app users can directly purchase items showcased in the magazine. Ladies, lock your credit cards away!

In terms of advertising on the app Glamour made a clever move. Advertisers can not buy space only in the online edition of the magazine, they have to buy advertising space in the print edition too. Through this technique Glamour increased its advertising revenue by 57% (September 2010 compared to September 2009).

Through the interactive features and additional content available exclusively on the app Glamour may build a strong customer base for the app yet a few users have complained about the cost ($3.99) of downloading the magazine each month. The other issue is that at the moment the app is only available for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. What is your opinion, will you buy your favourite magazines online and read it on your mobile device?

In many cases a website’s navigational functionality is not considered during the initial stages of development. Before developing a website one has to think about the users’ needs as well as how the visitors are going to be ‘guided’ to complete the website’s goals (i.e. sales, increase leads, provide users with information) whilst satisfying the user’s need.

Ideally a website’s navigation should aim to enhance visitors’ browsing experience. If visitors are having trouble finding the information they are looking for it is likely that they will click away from your website and find the information elsewhere. The goal is to make your website as user-friendly as possible. Below are a few things you can do to ensure that visitors enjoy an optimal browsing experience.

Name your menu tabs descriptively

Let users know what type of information they can expect to see when they click on a certain menu tab. In other words, once they land on the menu tab page, the information has to be relevant to the tab’s name.

Where are they on the website?

Let users know where they are on your website by highlighting the menu tab they’re currently in.

Include a sitemap

A sitemap in the footer of every page will help visitors to easily navigate your website to find the specific information they are looking for.

Make use of interlinking within your website copy

Provide visitors with easy access to more information on your website by making use of inter-linking within your website copy.

Lastly, avoid drop-down menus. In general drop-down menus are not easy to navigate and therefore not very user-friendly.

The lazy website is found snoozing and gets a new home page in the hope that he will attract leads.