In a person’s twenties, she transitions
from being under her parents’ roof and on their dime. She learns to do things
like date, work a nine to five job, feed herself, and even do her taxes. These
changes can lead to what is commonly known as the quarter life crisis. Those
young adults, who are feeling down, confused, or just bored, increasingly turn
to the internet to connect with a community of like-thinkers. In the last five
years, many websites geared toward millennials—and specifically 20-something women—have
gained popularity.
One of the reasons these sites have
been developed and are highly trafficked is that 95% of millennials go online
(Pew Internet). In addition, the average female over 15 years old spends 8%
more time online than her male counterpart (Abraham, 2010). Two
of these frequented websites are Forever Twenty Somethings (FTS) and Thought
Catalog (TC). Though both sites tackle similar content, they take different
approaches to reaching their audience through layout and functionality and
visual design with varying degrees of success.
Forever Twenty Somethings: Overview of
Content and Audience
The title alone of Forever Twenty
Somethings gives the website a clear purpose: to reach people in their
twenties. Though this site doesn’t solely target women, the vast majority of
its audience is female, which is clear in the female friendly color scheme and
the list of blogs in the blogroll (featuring sites like Her Campus, Girls in
Their 20s, and NEXT for Women, among others). The content of the site includes
articles on life, love, career, health, style, and entertainment. Milennials
are 43% more likely read blogs than older users (Zickuhr, 2010), which is what sites like this
are counting on. Some articles are satirical, some are goofy, some are serious,
and some are a combination, and all of the articles are written by people just
like the reader: millennial, and majority female.
The article, “Singles Vs Couples: Why Can’t We All
Just Get Along,” is written by a
woman in her twenties posing a serious question to other millennials: “As we
get older, is it possible to remain good friends with someone who is single
when you are in a relationship?” It is a great example because it’s
all-inclusive in that it appeals to both single people and those in
relationships. Every person falls in one of those two categories; therefore,
every person will potentially find this article relevant. Yet it is written
through a female lens.
Using one woman’s opinion as a platform
to solicit other opinions creates a community in which millennials can discuss
an issue that matters to them. Discussion appeals to women in particular,
because they tend to use the internet as a way to engage with others (Abraham,
2010). Thus, it’s no surprise that the majority of commenters on Forever Twenty
Somethings is female. FTS successfully satisfies the desires of their readers
by providing relevant, inclusive content via a discussion platform.
Thought Catalog: Overview of Content
and Audience
Like Forever Twenty Somethings,
Thought Catalog targets millennials through quirky, often thought-provoking
articles on topics like love, life, and current events. In a recent TC article
the writer says, “Most of our readership is interested in dating and/or advice
about women/men and relationships.” Though TC targets all millennials,
according to Alexa, females are greatly over represented as readers on the site
(Alexa, 2014).
Chelsea Fagan, a millennial and regular
contributor to TC, recently wrote an article titled “13 Simple Dating Rules We Should All
Start Following.”
Though “13 Simple Dating Rules” is gender neutral, the tone and content of the
post seems to be geared toward women. The difference between a post like this
and a post like “Singles Vs Couples: Why Can’t We All
Just Get Along” from FTS is that
TC’s article is exclusive. It applies only to people who are single and dating.
It also does not ask for other opinions or lend itself to discussion. Other TC
articles do this, but to a lesser extent than the typical FTS article. However, both sites are able to gain and
maintain attention by posting relevant content that is interesting, entertaining,
and often humorous.
Forever Twenty Somethings: Discussion
of Layout and Functionality
Poor
website layout and functionality can lead to higher bounce rates and a lower
number of views per visitor. Bounce rates do not mean everything, and should be
analyzed with a grain of salt, but they can serve as a useful indicator for how
certain pages of a site are doing compared to others. Number of views per
visitor allows us to see how well connected content is, if it’s easy to
navigate, search and share, and find related content.
Forever
Twenty Somethings is easy to navigate from the topics listed in the navigation
bar. Each topic in the navigation also has a drop down menu that further
clarifies the subjects a user can browse. Thankfully there are no popup
windows, which tend to irritate and distract readers leading to a higher bounce
rate (Eubanks, 2013).
A
slider, most likely a Wordpress plugin, draws the user’s attention to the most
popular recent posts by featuring a large image accompanied by teaser text. The
site directs readers to posts others have liked in the past with the hope that
readers will like these pages and spend more time on their site, which lowers
their bounce rate. The only negative thing about the homepage in terms of
functionality is that the slider takes quite a while to load. The Webmaster may
have uploaded images with too many pixels, which causes it to run slowly. A
2012 New York Times article said, “People
will visit a Web site less often if it is slower than a close competitor by
more than 250 milliseconds.” Two hundred and fifty milliseconds is less than a
blink of an eye. FTS may want to increase their bandwidth or decrease their
photo file size to eliminate slow load times.
The
right hand column of the homepage includes: a search bar, RSS feed, ads, and
social media buttons. All of which make it easy for users to browse, share, and
search. According to Pew Research Internet, millennials are 83% more likely go to use social
networking sites than older users (Pew, 2010). Having social sharing readily
available on each blog post and in the sidebar allow users to connect with the
site and share its content with just the click of a button. This in turn leads
to more eyes on the site.
The
posts on the homepage are separated by horizontal rules, which make for easy
reading. FTS seems to be missing internal and external links on many, if not
all, of its posts. That means that once readers have finished a post, they have
nowhere to go. FTS could benefit from adding links to their content and other
blogs or websites in their posts. Adding internal links will make their content
seem more connected and allow the reader to browse relevant articles, which
increases views per visitor.
Thought Catalog: Discussion of Layout
and Functionality
Thought Catalog is a more difficult to
navigate than Forever Twenty Somethings. There is no navigation bar, other than
links to the About page and TC’s twitter feed. There is also no search function
on the homepage. The only way to view content, aside from just browsing through
their recent posts, is to scroll to the bottom of the page where they list the
popular articles of their frequent contributors.
Though navigation is lacking, social
media sharing opportunities abound on TC, as they do on FTS. In the sidebar on
each article there are different buttons for social media sharing that show how
many others have shared the article. The user can also go straight to the
comments section to read what others have to say and participate themselves. At
the end of each post TC has a tag line that says “You should Follow Thought
Catalog on Facebook (or Twitter) here,” just to reinforce their presence on
social media.
In addition to providing many social
media sharing opportunities, TC does a fantastic job of internal and external
linking on their posts, unlike FTS. Each post has a banner at the top that features
the most recent “thought” and a list of more from TC and of more from the web
at the bottom of the page. In addition, in the text of the post TC links to
their own and other’s content through hyperlinked keywords or phrases. All of
this linking serves to increase views per visitor.
Forever Twenty Somethings: Discussion
of Visual Design
Continuity of branding, contrast, and
use of images are all very important to the design of a website. FTS has a
large banner that is static on every page, which serves as branding for the
site and their social media pages. It is fun and colorful, but not busy enough
to be distracting. Three of the four images used in their branding represent
the central goals of Forever Twenty Somethings: a site for recent graduates
(cap image) to discuss (chat image) life and love (heart image). The fourth
image, a champagne glass, doesn’t really factor into the goals unless it is
supposed to represent “life,” but hopefully that is not the case. It would be
prudent for FTS to change that image to better represent their goals.
Contrast is vital to a website because
it makes images and text standout and draws readers to specific areas of
content. FTS still uses a light grey background and should consider moving to
an all white background. White backgrounds are easier to read from and they
allow for more contrast between text and images on the site. The green from
their banner is used for hyperlinks throughout the site, but FTS would be more
visually appealing if they used one (possibly two) more colors from the banner
throughout the site.
Using images is important for clicks
and shares and adding a visually stimulating element to a website. Nearly every
post on FTS is accompanied by a photo or gif that represents the content. This
is imperative since 39% of women age 18-34 say they are more likely to click on
online content if it has a photo (EMarketer, 2012). Having photos also makes
posts better for sharing, especially on Facebook where posts with photos
generate 53% more likes and 104% more comments (Corliss, 2012).
Thought Catalog: Discussion of Visual Design
Thought Catalog uses branding, contrast,
and images differently than Forever Twenty Somethings. TC’s branding is simple
and similar on pages and social media sites, as FTS’s is. However, TC’s
branding may be too simple. It’s black text in Georgia font on a white
background. There is no image or graphic that distinguishes it. However, the artlessness
of the banner and branding allows the images on the site to standout.
TC primarily uses images to drive
browsing on their homepage. These images are accompanied by a catchy title and a
sentence describing the content with keywords to draw attention. TC uses video
in addition to images to attract more views and shares. Millennials are 80%
more likely to go online to watch video than older users, so TC is catering to its
audience by providing clips (Zickuhr, 2010). Only six articles are listed on
every page, and they are evenly spaced out, which makes the site easy to skim.
On individual TC pages, ads appear in
the banner at the top of the page. This is distracting and looks like spam.
From a design perspective, they would benefit in moving ads to the right
sidebar of every page—like FTS—rather than it being the first thing readers
see. Moving the ads may lower bounce rates.
Forever Twenty Somethings and Thought
Catalog moving forward
Both Forever Twenty Somethings and
Thought Catalog have a strong following of readers. However, TC is quite a bit
more popular than FTS. This is a bit surprising when we look back on the
differences in navigation and search, but not as surprising when we think about
TC’s superior use of internal and external linking and use of images in their visual
design.
Moving forward both sites need to invest in responsive design
for better mobile and tablet use. Eighteen percent of millennials exclusively
use mobile devices to access the internet and 67% say they use both mobile
phones and desktop computers (Lella, 2014). Currently neither site is optimized
for mobile use. Because both FTS and TC’s main audiences are millennial, and
specifically millennial women, it is imperative that they make use of mobile
traffic. The real question is why two sites built and run by millennials are
not already making use of responsive design.
References
Abraham,
Linda Boland, Marie Pauline Mörn and Andrea Vollman (2010). Women on the Web:
How Women are Shaping the Internet. ComScore Inc.
EMarketer
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Eubanks, Nick (2013). Reduce Bounce
Rate: 20 Things to Consider. Retrieved from http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2237250/Reduce-Bounce-Rate-20-Things-to-Consider
Kathryn Zickuhr (2010). Generations
2010. Pew Research Internet Project. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/2010/12/16/generations-2010/
Alexa (2014). Retrieved from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/thoughtcatalog.com
Lohr, Steve (2012). For Impatient Web Users, an Eye Blink Is Just Too
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Bacic, Harris (2014). 3 Major Web
Design Trends. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/allbusiness/2014/01/14/3-major-web-design-trends-for-2014/
Corliss, Rebecca (2012). Photos on
Facebook Generate 53% More Likes Than the Average Post. Hubspot. Retrieved from
http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33800/Photos-on-Facebook-Generate-53-More-Likes-Than-the-Average-Post-NEW-DATA.aspx
Lella, Adam (2014).
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