The Publish Digital
Playbook Newsletter
About this playbook
This playbook is sponsored by VERTIQUL, whose mission is to help content creators make beautiful and engaging digital publications that readers love. At VERTIQUL, we see examples of digital publications every day - some great, some less so.
We know that Association publishing professionals work hard to make their magazines and other publications truly excellent, and in that vein many have requested examples, both good and otherwise. This first installment of our “Playbook for Association Digital Publications is intended to help Associations benchmark their own publications and find some great ideas, as well as a few things to avoid.
Methodology
A long-time industry expert in digital publishing was engaged to conduct the study, including creation of criteria, selection of Associations and reviews of the various publications.
The publications that we have reviewed are from Associations that in recent years have made it clear that they care about digital publishing. We identified an initial set of 120 Associations that have been active in digital publishing and then selected 20 associations for this initial study that we believe can offer an excellent starting point for benchmarking.
We intend to review additional Association digital publications in future installments, and may also revisit some from this first study. When we identify and cite opportunities for digital experience improvement, we will monitor these organizations for future changes to properly acknowledge the progress & improvements.
Association Publications Included in this Review
A variety of Associations were selected for inclusion in this effort with the intent to fully represent a broad spectrum of organizations selected for the playbook updates across the following criteria:
- Size of membership
- Type of members, representing various segments of the economy, including professional associations, hobby interest groups, industry associations and benevolent organizations.
- Number of publications, the smallest having one publication and the largest with sixteen pubs.
Associations Included in this Study
AABB
AACE International
The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business
Academy of General Dentistry
Academy of Model Aeronautics
Society for Human Resource Management
AFCEA International
American Academy of Audiology
American Academy of Pediatrics
American Association for Justice
American Association for the Advancement of Science
American Association of Critical Care Nurses
American Association of School Librarians
American Physiological Society
Association Media and Publishing
Edison Electric Institute
Illuminating Engineering Society of North America
National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association
National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
National Council of University Research Administrators
Rotary International
Texas Association of Realtors
The Institute of Internal Auditors
Definitions and Scoring of Evaluation Factors
Two viewpoints were considered in the creation of the evaluation factors. First, we put ourselves in the shoes of an Association and considered the aspects required to have success in digital publishing.
Secondly, we utilized the viewpoint of audience members/readers and identified the factors that would offer the most impact on their experience.
Altogether, eleven factors were identified and organized into two categories. All of these elements work together strategically leverage the whole
Factors Relevant to Audiences
- Accessibility: Is the publication usable by the disabled as measured WCAG guidelines. A 90+ score utilizing Google’s Lighthouse was required for top marks in this area.
- Availability: Is the content immediately and always accessible digitally to readers?
- Aesthetics: Does the art direction and design leverage the digital format in a manner that is pleasing to the eye?
- Linear Experience: Is there a longform feel and a linear periodical content experience offered which is distinct from website clutter such as toolbars or menus?
- Performance: Does the publication load at acceptable speeds as measured by Google’s Lighthouse? A 90+ Lighthouse score was required for a top ranking.
- Usability: Is the digital publication easy to use, offering a low friction content readership experience.
Factors Relevant to Associations
- Presentation: The overall published/listed promotional awareness of the publication by the association.
- Branding: The unique branding value of the publication to the organization. A brand is effectively a conceptual identity, and publications can support or detract from that identity.
- Conversion: Rates the effectiveness of the digital publication in driving subscriptions and membership signups, i.e. is the user compelled to seek access or become a member to gain access to the publication. Good practices include offering access to preview or metered views for non-members and allowing for opt-in to grow subscriber or interest lists.
- Revenue: Does the publication offer revenue generation opportunities for the association and value for advertisers beyond memberships?
- Marketing: Effectiveness of marketing for the digital publication including association email, social, and general content marketing strategies. We did not score the marketing factor in this playbook as this is a topic that merit extensive focus on it’s own, look for a future playbook installment on marketing
Values used in Scoring Factors
A simple rating scale of 0-3 was used in evaluating each of the factors, with a 3 being the top score representing excellent or best in class performance. A “1” indicates low or poor performance in a given area, and a “0” indicates a complete absence of a factor from a digital publication.
For example, some publications offer no opportunity for revenue generation (outside of membership or subscriptions) such as advertisements or sponsored content and thus would receive a “0” in the “Revenue” factor.
| Score | Description |
| 0 | Not present or ratable |
| 1 | Poor, the factor was present, but poorly executed. |
| 2 | Good, the factor was present and adequately to well executed. |
| 3 | Excellent, the factor was present and exceptionally well executed. |
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Analysis
Publication Formats
Twenty-one digital publications were analyzed in this study. Nine were offered in more than one format, which most commonly was web pages plus a PDF or web pages plus a flip edition.
Web page versions of publications were the most popular formats, narrowly beating out PDF’s. Web pages offer advantages including ready adaptability and readability on various devices such as smartphones (although some didn’t do this well), tracking possibilities using common analytics tools and ability to utilize rich media such as video and animations. Many of the web versions utilized a blog-style approach of article publishing over time versus an issue-oriented approach.
PDF’s offer an advantage in easy offline usage, but have many limitations including the effort required to make them accessible, lack of rich media capability and difficulty of use on smartphones.
Flip editions seek to overcome the disadvantages of PDF’s in accessibility and rich media with varying degrees of success. Some vendors offer versions that work reasonably well on smartphones. Flip editions often fall short in offering an engaging reading experience and often don’t mimic effectively the linear content experience of a magazine as well as some of the features of web pages.
Examples of Digital Publications by Factor
In this section examples are provided across the various evaluation factors. These examples are intended to assist Associations through illustrating good practices, as well as pointing out few practices to be avoided.
Presentation
The American Association of School Librarians maintain an excellent blog with frequent content updates. However, it is not so easy to find that they publish a magazine, and even more difficult to find a way to subscribe to the magazine. As can be seen in the screenshot below, the only subscription link is hidden in the footer of the web page for their blog.
Branding
The unique branding value presented for the publication value aligned to the organization
Conversion
The journal Pediatrics provides quite a bit of free content in the form of abstracts and many full articles for free in combination with restricting access to certain key articles to subscribers or readers willing to buy them for $25 each.
The American Journal of Physiology - Cell Physiology has a similarly excellent conversion flow, providing both free and subscriber only content. Content is clearly marked as “Free Access” in green lettering or as locked with a red padlock icon.
Revenue
Sponsored content can provide tremendous value for advertisers and Associations, Edison Electric Institute’s Electric Perspectives magazine provides a good example of an article placed by a sponsor. The AASCB and the AAAS have both had success in selling display ads in their respective digital publications as shown below. The AASCB is relies on the most popular and traditional digital ad size of 300x250, while the AAAS has at least one newer high impact ad type (a “billboard”) as well as a variety of typical digital banner ad sizes.
Availability
SHRM’s HR Today magazine can be found directly in the top navigation bar on every page of the website.
We also found Associations that have made their magazines difficult to find. For example, NARFE has a media page that mentions their magazine, but doesn’t provide a link. We were able to find the magazine only through a Google search.
Aesthetics
SHRM does a nice job leveraging art and design in the web format of their magazine. We were unable to evaluate the digital edition as a subscription is required.
Usability
The American Physiological Society has created web-based versions of their journals that offer excellent ease of use and a good user experience. Issues, table of contents, and articles in various formats are all readily accessible and easy to navigate. Example below is from the journal Cell Physiology.
Experience
The ability to offer a good longform reading experience was one the lowest scored areas across all publications that we examined. Good reading experiences result in increased user engagement and are vital to leveraging the resources invested into content creation.
Cluttered experiences were more common than clean reading experiences in the sites examined, and none rated as excellent.
An example below from the AASCB of shows a cluttered experience not conducive to reading engagement.
Accessibility
Accessibility was measured using Google’s Lighthouse, the example score of 95 below was for the Association for Media and Publishing which received an “excellent” rating. Scores of 70-89 were rated as “good/adequate”, and scored below 70 rated as “poor”.
Only 12% of the publications evaluated scored in the excellent category with scores of 90 or higher while 25% rated as poor in this category. While most of the rest were good/adequate, those publications still face risks such as lawsuits and failure of an accessibility audit. Publications insufficiently accessible expose associations to legal risk, as courts continue to find private organizations at fault and subject to judgements. For those still learning about accessibility, we have provided a link to a useful guide.
Performance
Performance was measured using Google’s Lighthouse tool and attempts to measure the delay experienced by users by they can engage well with content because of loading delays. An example Lighthouse performance report for AACE International is shown below.
Most publications performed adequately, although a few were quite slow with load times in excess of ten seconds. About ⅓ of publications showed poor performance, with Lighthouse scores below 70. Only a handful performed well, with scores of 90% plus.
Page load speed is often cited in user satisfaction studies as the most important criteria in creating a good experience, and is fundamental to all other efforts. The majority of Associations have work to do to ensure that their digital publications load in an acceptable timeframe, which according to Google is under 2 seconds. You can find tips for addressing page speed in this helpful article.
Conclusions and Next Steps
Making publications accessible to the disabled and easy to find/available were the highest scored factors across all publications in this study. However, with average scores just under the good range of a “2”, many associations have substantial room for improvement in both of these areas.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, the lowest rated factor across all publications was revenue generation with an average score below 1. Most association publications in this study don’t take advantage of any opportunities for advertisements, sponsored content or other digital revenue generation options. Conversion was also poorly rated with an average score of 1.3, indicating that there is significant untapped potential to grow subscriptions and memberships at most of these organizations.
The remaining factors had similar average scores of around 1.5, indicating possibilities for substantial improvement across most publications in these areas.
Publications from the American Physiological Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science tied for the highest overall ratings. These were the American Journal of Physiology Cell Physiology and Science magazine.
Next Steps
We intend to expand this study to include a much larger number of publications as well as doing a deep dive into the topic of marketing for digital publications. Look for updates on this project coming later this year
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