Discover.com Website Design Review

ARTICLE SNIPPET - The Site that Earned a Top Score in 2004 Hasn't Lost Too Much Ground. The Lesson Here is Simply a Wake-Up Call—for Online Publishers, Continuous Improvement is a Requirement Just to Keep Up.

Readers familiar with Mequoda as Internet Media Review (IMR), might remember that Discover.com was given the number one Best Practice Ranking for Consumer Magazine Website Design. Since that time, a lot has changed—for Discover.com, for the Mequoda website design scorecard and for magazine websites.

The changes: Discover.com was bought from parent Disney by Bob Guccione Jr. at the end of 2005; IMR changed its name to Mequoda and has increased the scorecard to include 14 categories instead of the original 10 and finally the drastic improvement of media websites in the last two years has raised the bar for all entrants considerably. At the end of the review, Discover.com has lost a little ground, but not much. This scorecard shows that Discover.com still brings the right strategy to their site, increasing subscriptions and consumer reach.

Bob Guccione Jr. (founder of Spin and Gear) bought Discover and its respected, intelligent science and technology editorial because he wanted to "eradicate the preciousness of the science category." He wanted to make a magazine accessible and interesting to a mass audience. Readability, labeling and language and relationship building are some of the good grades on this scorecard that bear out this argument. But, If he really wants to follow through on his promise to make the magazine site more "exciting and entertaining," Discover.com has some work to do in community building and content webification.

• Discover how they balance their homepage real estate for in-house advertising and external advertising - page 8
• Learn how Discover.com takes advantage of personalization features to build relationships with users - page 10
• Understand why Discover.com is leaving a great opportunity on the table by ignoring this one very viable community building tool - page 12
• Avoid the mistake Discover.com is making in their website navigation - page 14
• Find out what's missing from the Discover.com site that could have users coming back for more everyday - page 21

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