With my experience in Interactive Design I can look at a site and identify issues quite quickly. I can also prioritize those issues to efficiently reach the project goal. When I looked at the Hearty Magazine for the first time I saw a lot of potential and a lot of small things that needed fixing.
The small things, such as making it easy for Users to submit and share Hearty Magazine's content, are what makes a site successful. Hearty Magazine didn't have this ability and it was one of the first things on my list!
Simple things like not being able to click headers to navigate to specific parts of the site are just ways that inhibit a portion of a sites Users to navigate in the way that they are used to. This was another item I fixed right away.
Well targeted newsletters are a great - just don't start sending spam. I've started implementing Campaign Monitor with Hearty Magazine. Users are now able to sign up for the Hearty Magazine newsletter. Hearty can now keep fresh in their Users minds by sending visually rich HTML emails alerting Users of updates, contests, etc.
