Comment by jmduke | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmduke | Hacker News Reader

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Here's a notion: what if we assume that the entire staff of Esquire is, at varying levels, competent at their job?

So jwz's use case is that he's an inbound link from a social media site, right? So Esquire is optimizing two things here: conversion rate to the downloaded app and amount of time spent on site. The first one is obvious -- people who have the app downloaded are going to spend much more time overall and are going to be more valuable; the second one is a bit trickier, since you play a balancing act between getting users to dive deeper into the publication while making sure they don't leave altogether. In this sort of case, it's pretty reasonable to assume that someone has either the data or intuition to say "Hey, if they're visiting our site from Facebook, they have a pretty big investment in trying to read the article than someone who Googled something vaguely related to the article."

(The same goes true from mobile, where audiences tend to be slower and more captive.)

So, if we understand the series of decisions that led us to such an experience, we then have to ask why were those decisions made? Clearly there's a backlash against this kind of thing -- nobody says "wow, what a great banner ad!" -- but its hard to argue against the financial straits of such a publication. Esquire doesn't have the circulation they used to, and its not a non-profit; they need to make money somehow.

Either way, its hardly fair to pin this on Esquire's web designer. Esquire's management, maybe -- or maybe the legions of people addicted to AdBlock, the legions of people who put a low -- and getting even lower -- value on content.

Now, everything is hinging on that assumption that people are vaguely competent over at Esquire. While it's entirely possible that such an assumption is invalid, I find its a more comforting one than the opposite assumption.

Those pop up ads also appear inside the esquire ipad magazine app. You subscribe to the magazine, read it on your ipad, click a link to bonus content, and get a giant bonus content blocking ad telling you to subscribe to the very app whose webview you are currently in.

He's not just complaining about there being ads. He's complaining about the site being unusable for reading. If you haven't run into the unclosable popovers on a mobile web site, you're luckier than I am on any given day. If I can't see the article when I first load the page, and if the page then self-destructs behind the popover of doom, I will stop going to that site. There was revenue to be had from me, but not if I know the site is broken.

My argument is that its not outside the realm of possibility that the decision was made -- either via intuition or data -- that the additional value captured by popovers is larger than the value lost by people who bounce as a result of the popovers.

> "that the additional value captured by popovers is larger than the value lost by people who bounce as a result of the popovers."

and that, children, is how you know you've lost your soul.

They're getting no value from popovers on mobile devices, so it is either incompetence or insufficient bandwidth to design well for mobile.

you are not in a position to say they get no value from popovers on mobile devices.

For all you know like the OP is trying to say, they might have done the hard math and decided that this is the way they want to say.

I'm not saying it is the best but rather they might be fully aware of what they are doing

"Do not attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

"...but don't rule out malice."

Whatever.

Esquire has a great print experience, but their web one, mobile especially, is awful.

I'm sure their lead print designer gets final say for what goes to press. If their web designer is caving in to every ridiculous demand of management, that's the fault of the designer, not management.

So either the lead "webmaster" has no idea what they're doing, in which case they should get a new job, or they know exactly what they're doing but are hamstrung by management, in which case they should get a new job.

Its really not, designers in publishing companies do not have final say. The publishers do.

These are established companies with existing management structures. The owners / management controlling the brands will have briefed in a designer to implement all of these elements.

There priority will be leverage the audience of esquire, to allow them maximise the sales they can do via media buyers.

Audience development for sites like these, is often only minimally effected by design. Especially considering these are established brands. They already get the numbers, they dont need to earn them.

Web designers are just the people paid to put the designs together options together for management to choose from.

You neatly skipped past the whole "making money" part of the OPs post. Esquire has a great print experience. It is packed with ads. You're just used to it, so you don't care. I very much doubt the lead designer of the print edition can dictate how many ads are in the magazine, or where they are.

Print ads don't have to be physically peeled off the page in order to read the content underneath. They don't cause the pages to fall out of the magazine when you flip them out of the way. They don't cramp the content into a postage-stamp sized corner of the page. They don't inline ads every third paragraph. The ads themselves don't roll around on the page or blink.

There's ads in the print magazine, but they're in a format that doesn't run into absolute conflict with the content.

The print ads rarely jump in front of the text, permanently obscuring it. It's baffling, but this is a real phenomenon on the mobile web.

It's not just a matter of getting used to ads. Print ads don't jump across the page and hide the text of an article after I start reading it.

So you're saying that the entire staff of Esquire is both competent at their jobs and also has implemented a design which is effectively completely broken on the ipad, one of the most popular computing devices of the last half decade?

Yes, they're entirely competent and following exactly the YC/HN mantra: "make something everybody hates".

Never mind "understanding the series of decisions that led us to such an experience". Look at the outcome, for crying out loud.

Nothing else matters.

Nothing else matters.

Lots of other things matter, such as revenue.

>>Lots of other things matter, such as revenue.

Revenue in this case is tied to good user experience, specifically things like how long people stay on your site and whether they click the various links on it.

But you already know that. You're just arguing for the sake of arguing.

From Seinfeld, "The Pitch":

    Russell: Well, why am I watching it?
    George: Because it's on TV.
    Russell: (pause) Not yet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofOSlsNz5I8

It comes down to Hanlon's Razor. Sure, we could assume that these folks are all competent. But that then implies that they are, at varying levels, evil. Assuming incompetence is actually the charitable interpretation.

But that then implies that they are, at varying levels, evil.

Or it implies they have motivations perhaps not understood, which was the OP's point.

Hanlon's Razor doesn't say that if something isn't caused by stupidity or incompetence then it must be malice.

No, the dichotomy between incompetence and evil comes from the situation. The Razor is just an illustration.

There are only two choices here. Either they want people to read their articles and are doing a bad job of it (incompetence) or they are luring people under false pretenses and preventing them from doing what they want (evil). There is no third way.

"Motivations perhaps not understood" is just a way of saying that we may not know why they're being evil.

Or they want you to look at ads as part of reading the content. Which is not really how I care to read things, but that doesn't make it evil.

Where does the false pretense come in? The popover crap?

Some anecdata: I just viewed that same article on my phone, an Android G2. Zero trouble. No font-size issues (though I could have upped the font size without zooming in the whole page; I'm amazed at sites that manage to prevent that).

No popover stuff. There was a smallish banner ad at the very top. I apparently got a page designed for a mobile device, because there was no sidebar stuff either.

Could this be an iPad issue?

What if we assume that we are consumers hoping that companies will produce products we want to use? Are we going to be super tolerant and understanding of all the pain their site imposes on us? Or are we going to call them assholes and morons and make it very clear that we can and will get equivalent content elsewhere?

They manipulate and abuse us, we manipulate and abuse them. If we are supposed to be understanding of the self-interested reasons they manipulate and abuse us, can't we expect the same courtesy in return?

I just wish that news sites would approach the "get users to spend more time on the site" problem by improving their content so I will read the whole article and want to read another rather than by making it a time consuming process to even start reading.

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