Press Gazette in the UK published an article which points to how GQ UK is focusing on brand engagement rather than traffic. In reality, this means the overall traffic is down, but they have actually grown their total minutes spent from year to year. 

Their efforts are working. There is more brand loyalty and engagement.  

As I wrote recently, commerce plays into this brand engagement goal: “[Readers] are interacting with the brand, taking their recommendations, and often bringing physical products into their lives.”

Today I am going to focus on GQ USA, where Patrick Gray told me that “50% of GQ’s audience engages with content on GQ Recommends.” 

That’s huge. 

Let’s breakdown what commerce looks like for this Condé Nast brand in the United States. 

Navigation

Condé Nast has tabs for commerce in the main navigation on each Web site, some with slightly different wording based on the audience: GQ has “Recommends,” Vogue and Allure have “Shopping.”

This is what the main navigation and hover-over sub head looks like on GQ in the United States:

Note that Vogue, another Condé Nast brand, has a much more extensive sub navigation for its “Shopping” tab: 

Once you click through on the GQ U.S. site, a sub header appears:

I noticed this sub header changed as I looked at the sites on different days. Below is the subhead that appeared a couple of days before the big Amazon Prime Day sale in the U.S.:

These are full sites in themselves. In Patrick’s words, “the GQ Recommends shopping experience uses Condé Nast’s Commerce toolkit, which is the underlying product across all brands in the portfolio, including Vogue Shopping. The toolkit allows teams to present each brand’s unique proposition whilst allowing the business to optimise at scale.”

In other words, each module is built and tried on a single site and then the templates are optimised for high performance by product and technology teams. These are constantly being tweaked as consumers change and as more data becomes available. 

Here are a few of the modules:

A new module: editors’ picks

A recently introduced module is the “editor wish list.” This takes brand engagement even deeper as readers are following specific editors and writers. This drives the personal relationship. And from what I can gather, the newsrooms that have adopted this so far have enjoyed doing so.

Offline: newsletters 

GQ is also utilising newsletters for commerce. When visiting the “Recommended” page for the first time, a user is prompted to sign up for the newsletter. And the “GQ Recommends” newsletter is one of only six that appears under the main “newsletter” navigation. 

When I asked Patrick about newsletters, he told me: “We are actively working to drive our newsletter business as a qualified and loyal audience. The Vogue Shopping newsletter continues to drive significant triple digit revenue growth in 2024.”

GQ commerce as a subscription

Last but not least, GQ Recommends has its own subscription product. Most of you will be familiar with the subscription boxes that companies such as Ipsy pioneered. This is now coming to GQ. It’s managed by a separate team. 

Conclusion

Condé Nast has built a solid commerce product that enables it to optimise for readers, share learnings between brands, and generate (an increasing) revenue stream while staying true to the brands. There is a lot that news organisations can learn from their approach. 

If you’d like to subscribe to my bi-weekly newsletter, INMA members can do so here.

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