Online editorial content seems to be near irrelevant for women’s magazines’, write Hanna-Kaisa Ellonen, of Lappeenranta University of Technology, Patrik Wikström, of Queensland University of Technology, and Anette Johansson, of Jönköping University. The authors randomly selected 295 visitors to a women’s magazine’s website, and recorded their visits on that website for 16 consecutive days.

According to the authors, less than one per cent of all recorded visits involved editorial content. In most cases the readers navigated directly to one of the blogs hosted by the website, and left without exploring any other content. The results bring into question whether the significance of online presence for magazines has been overestimated, the authors conclude.

The article, The role of the website in a magazine business – revisiting old truths, was published by the Journal of Media Business Studies. It is available online (asbtract free).

Picture: Untitled by fancycrave1, licence CC0 1.0.