Illustrations

A wide range of graphic elements can be used on-screen, but you need to take care that they don’t take a long time to download. If you have large photographs embedded in an email, animated elements on a website page or very high definition illustrations, these can take a good deal of time to arrive. This is fine if the recipient is on broadband, but otherwise may irritate people because of the length of time it takes before they can access the material and it can also happen that telephone links are broken during lengthy downloading, thus wasting time in re-accessing the information. Having a lower resolution to photographs and other graphics will reduce the time taken to download – such illustrations will not print out as clearly as ones with a higher resolution, but they will look perfectly acceptable on a computer screen.

Timescale

It is much easier to produce electronic publications frequently than it is to produce printed publications. This is because design is done as part of the early production stage and the publication does not need subsequently to be sent to a printer or distribution house for further processing.

An electronic publication, therefore, can easily come out weekly, probably in a shorter version than a printed publication, but also probably in a more up-to-date version because of the shorter production time involved.

Readership

It is generally easier to build a readership base with electronic publications as they tend to be less expensive – and often free to the reader – and because they are easier to publicise through email networks.

Electronic publications should not be sent to unwilling recipients, otherwise they will be classed as ‘spam’ but, once a recipient has been identified, delivery is straightforward and simply requires a short computer entry to be made.

Online Marketing

Electronic publications can, themselves, be marketed online and they can also contain online marketing for other products and services.

One excellent way of marketing online is through what are called ‘Affiliate Programmes’. Affiliate Programmes involve the use of other people to market your products or services. The way they work is as follows: you contact other people with an offer. The offer is usually that, if they mention, or promote, your products or services on their own websites, in their own electronic publications or as footnotes to their emails by including a link to your website, when people click through to that link (or, less commonly, mention they are an affiliate in an email to you) and then pay you money for a product or service, the person whose site included the original link will receive a commission on the money you are paid. This is a very effective way of marketing and can boost your sales enormously.

2. E-Zines

E-zines may be defined as electronically produced magazines. There are two ways of producing such publications; the first is to place a copy of a printed magazine onto your website; this will usually be in PDF format (see Glossary, Appendix 3); the second is specifically to design the magazine for on-screen consumption. In this section I will deal with the latter of these two – magazines designed specifically for on-screen reading.

Size

Because it tends to be harder to read on-screen than from a printed page, it is usually best to keep e-zines relatively short.

Typefaces And Sizes

Again, because of the difficulty of reading on-screen, typefaces do need to be clear and typesizes adequate to cater for those with less than perfect vision.

Graphics

A wide range of graphic devices can be used in e-zines but the same principles apply as with printed magazines – keep them uncomplicated and avoid over-use of commercially available ‘clip-art’, which can make them look unoriginal.