'Reader's Digest' World Wide Web a must to visit

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): Just like most other major magazines in the world, Reader's Digest also has a Web site, and I think it's one of the most interesting places to visit in Cyberspace. It also provides a good example of how one should manage a site on the World Wide Web.

I first visited the site not very long ago after the jump in the magazine's newsstand price left me breathless. The site is not a replacement for the magazine itself, but it will help quench some of the cravings that you're bound to develop after reading it regularly for more than 20 years.

The home page is well-designed, and it provides clear directions to what is available in the site. Do you want to see the highlight of this month's issue, or do you want to participate in a poll relating to issues such as the abuses of the Americans with Disabilities Act? Incidentally, the poll system found in the magazine's Web site could be an excellent model for our legislature to adopt to seek public opinion about a particular issue.

Following the unwritten standards for Web design, the Reader's Digest Web designer has placed a menu along the left side of the home page and most of the other pages. Click on the "Magazine" item on the menu, and you'll hop to the page featuring some of the contents of the current issue. Currently, for example, you can read the piece on the splendor of Angkor Wat by Fergus M. Bordewich. I thought the Web page would contain only a condensed version, but, no, it has the full-length article for us to read.

You can even participate in discussion forums on various topics. However, I haven't been able to really join the discussions from here because the site always happened to be down when I tried to access it.

You can do a lot of other things besides reading articles, browsing old archives and taking part in exchanges of opinions with other readers. Most interesting is perhaps the database of 4,000 humorous anecdotes that you can go through to keep yourself healthy. You can narrow down the jokes you want to read based on Reader's Digest's classic categories of "All in a Day's Work", "Humor in Uniform", "Campus Comedy" and others.

The best thing about the jokes is that you can even try to earn some good money by sending in your own funny stories. If you're lucky and your piece gets published, you'll get US$400, which goes a long way when converted into rupiah. Needless to say, it is tough since there is a lot of competition out there.

If you bump into a piece that you really like, or one that you know somebody else would relate to, you can E-mail that piece to him or her. There's no charge, since Reader's Digest seems to think that laughter should be a universal right.

Purchases

Just like Time Life, Reader's Digest has also been marketing books, videos, music CDs, CD-ROMs and other magazines directly to customers. In the years I spent as a student in Honolulu, I purchased a couple of CD collections containing classical music that I have really treasured. At that time, the deal was great because I had an opportunity to listen to the CDs for a week at home and could return them if I didn't really like them. I could make the payments in installments, too. However, now that the rupiah has depreciated so much, the $44.96 for the Disney Classic Music Collection that I would really like to add to my modest collection would be prohibitively expensive for me.

One good thing about the on-line catalog is that it enables us to check the list of songs included in the compilation. If you already have a good collection of CDs, you'd certainly want to know what the contents are of a particular CD before deciding whether to order it.

We can also subscribe to the U.S. Edition and place our order on-line. Unfortunately, there were two different subscription rates that I found on the Web pages -- $34.95 and $13.95. I filled in the form anyway and am now waiting for the actual invoice. Subscribers living in the U.S. can also order foreign language editions -- Reader's Digest is published in various other languages -- via the Shop at Home pages.

What makes the Web site of Reader's Digest so interesting to me is the fact that the pages are modified quite regularly. That is indeed the first rule of Web management. You should always keep them fresh so that people keep coming back. However, updates should be made only if you have fresh information to put up on the pages.

Secondly, if you browse through the pages of readersdigest.com, you'll realize that it doesn't contain too much graphics or many large images. This makes navigating through the pages quite fast. Surfers are human, and human beings don't like having to wait -- including waiting for the Web pages to get completely displayed.

The next thing that will strike you is that advertisements do not clutter the pages. Only at the bottom can you find some links to the sponsors. Although advertisements are claimed to be the biggest money-making tool on the Web, you'll turn your visitors off if you have too many of them on your pages.

So, if you're thinking of constructing your own Web site, visit this one and see a good example of how it should be done. And, if you're in the right mood, send in your humorous piece and who knows, you may get $400 for it.