The Condé Nast fitness magazine Self has just announced the revamp of its website. According to people in the know, it’s a website that will focus on what’s currently in vogue: videos and visuals.
“Under the artistic direction of Anna Wintour, a number of Condé Nast titles have gotten serious renovations — and fitness magazine Self, which brought on Joyce Chang from Cosmo in April to give it a clean, fashion-forward makeover, may have had the most successful one,” noted Fashionista. “Now the website, which launched a redesign (recently), reflects the glossy’s refreshed aesthetic, but with its own focus on video.”
Visitors to the site see this daily prompt: “What do you want to get out of today?”
“This is sort of stolen out of yoga class, where you set an intention,” says Chang. “We’re really trying to answer that question for women and give them ideas and offerings of what they want in their day — not just what they want to buy or what they want to do or what they want to eat, but really answering something that feels a little more essential. That’s the barometer that we put all our content against.”
Instead of offering an array of click-ables, the Self.com home page also features a full-width video on silent autoplay.
“Chang says that motion — whether it’s a video or a mood-setting GIF — will be a key feature of the site; so will infographics, flowcharts and quizzes, designed to be both informative and shareable,” noted Fashionista.
“One of their big goals was getting the site to feel a little bit more active and informed digitally,” explains Allison Connell, a graphic designer at Brooklyn-based creative firm Athletics NYC, which Self hired to redesign the site. “It’s the same look and feel of the magazine — the white, clean, open space — but informed digitally, so it that also works in a responsive experience.”
Another plan is to publish more frequently, with a team of as many as ten staffers pumping out fresh material more rapidly. The site’s coverage is also slated to extend to topics besides fitness, including careers.
“The question is always, ‘Is this good for women and is this good for your health?'” says Chang. “Those are the guiding principles of what makes a Self.com, or a Self story, in general.”
Branded content “will now have much more prominent placement on the new site,” according to publisher Mary Murcko.
Of course, social media marketing will be front and center.
“Chang says the magazine has seen its social media following increase by more than 100 percent since she joined, and that primary traffic drivers are Facebook and search engines,” notes Fashionista. “The magazine has 338,000 followers on Twitter, 178,000 followers on Instagram and 1,131,241 subscribers on Facebook. Chang says the strong following on its Instagram account in particular demonstrates how much Self’s readers are inspired by images.”
