Readership of Elle online

According to the Hearst magazine UK website the websites brand values are the following:

Stylish

Thought-provoking

Inspiring

Useful

In the know

It claims that the magazine is for 'stylish young individuals' with 'useful inspiration and practical ideas for developing your own style , in every area of your life.' 

The target audience is generally women aged between 16-30 who have an interest in fashion and more of a disposable income which is reflected by the websites advertising. 

Above is a print screen of the website. This advertisement appeared whilst I was waiting for an article to load. As you can see it features the up-market cosmetics brand of MAC makeup. This reflects the target readers interest of current beauty trends but also the target audience's income as MAC is slightly pricier than the average cosmetic. 

Elle Online local dimensions

Elleuk.com, as it's URL suggests is a UK based site. It does appear to have a leaning toward a UK audience, featuring mainly British celebrities and of course advertisements for British brands.

Elle magazine has magazine franchises all over the world. It is of French origin but since it's launch in 1945 issues have been printed in over 60 countries world wide. Out of these 60 counties the ELLE franchise has 27 online websites. They collectively attract over 26 million page views per month. 

Below is a print screen of Elle's South Africa online site, www.elle.co.za. Although it doesn't have a dissimilar layout to elleuk.com it does cater to it's audience, heavily featuring black models (which is a rarity in western magazines) but also borrowing content from back issues of Elle UK and Elle USA. It further acknowledges the location by referring to the season of Summer which in Africa runs from October to February differentiating the content that will be provided in Elle South Africa to Elle UK.

Search for online news

Here are what the following search engines provided when searching the term 'news'.

Ask Jeeves
Provides the URL, uk.ask.com which ackowleges the location of the searcher. Gives the searcher the option to search the whole web or 'UK only.' Lists the BBC News site as the top result followed by UK newspapers once again catering to the searchers location. On the right hand side of the page there is a scetion entitled 'Other people asked' with suggested questions related to news. On the left hand side there is the option to narrow the search by selecting images, video etc. Underneath the top result is a section called 'Related to your search: news.' All of the results provided are UK based despite the fact that I had not selected the 'UK only' search option. Does not list the amount of search results.

Yahoo
Has provided the UK and Ireland search engine. Gives it's own news site of Yahoo News as the top result displaying a list of headlines to read. The advertisement provided is related to the search conducted with The Huffington Post being advertised, though interestingly this is not based on my location. The BBC is listed twice on the page. Yahoo has also provided more specialist news searches such as MTV which would consist of mainly music and celebrity news and the same with NME. Related searches are listed which include 'Welsh News' which gives a nod to local results.

Google
Google has provided the most results so far with 11,830,000,000 results. Very locally orientated with lost of Bristolian results being listed. It gives my location and gives me the option to change my location which suggests that this would differ my results. Related searches list a lot of American news coorperations such as CNN and Fox news. BBC is once again listed twice, one for the general news and one for BBC Bristol.

Bing
BBC listed twice again. Half of the adverts listed are related to my search whilst the other half are completely unrelated with the adverts being for weight loss sites. Guardian is listed higher up than any other site and is listed above the related search section. It also gives me the option to search within the BBC imediately.

Ownership of Elle online

elleuk.com is owned by Hearst Magazines UK which is the trading name of the National Magazine Company. Hearst Magazines is the largest digital publisher in the UK and reaches 1 in 4 UK women and 1 in 6 UK adults.

Hearst Magazines owns the following publications, all of which have on and offline platforms:

Birth of Elle online

The current web address for Elle magazine UK is elleuk.com. The web address was formally owned by a news network called World News Network which existed from August 2003 until February 2005. Elle magazine took ownership of the web address on 13th February 2007.

The Elle UK website formally existed under a differen't URL, ellemagazine.co.uk which existed from September 2001 until, people who used the URL would be redirected to elleuk.com from February 18th 2007. ellemagazine.co.uk would later be owned by a french search engine called 'Indom' in May 2008.

Below shows the earliest available screen shot of elleuk.com

And here is a screen shot of the website today.

Although there are not very many images available on the early screen shot it is clear to see a visable difference between the two sites. The advertisements on the current site include moving image and the site is far more interactive with the option to follow Elle on Facebook and Twitter. There are more options available as the orginal site seems to have a limited range of stories to choose from. The newer site also offers differnt platforms of the magazine including Elle TV. The most interactive part of the orginal site is the option to register your email address where as the modern site allows the reader to comment on posts and articles.