Melissa Bell at Vox wrote about "The home page is dead! We're building one anyway." The homepage is an important topic for news organizaions and most get it wrong in my opinion.
The home page has been obsolete for a long time. The primary way readers come to articles is by Google and social media. Less and less people start at the home page. But obsolete does not mean dead (see McLuhan). For example, you can still buy buggy whips. The home page is not dead, it still has a role to play. It should now be an app.
Most news organizations and in particular newspapers think of the home page as the front page of a newspaper. It is like they are building it for the archives so they can say "This is what happened on this day." These organizations keep trying to fight the last war better. So they get the user experience all wrong.
News sites are getting better because previously every click lead to a static article template page. The news is more than articles. Rich interactive stories and data presentations are common. The most popular story last year (2013) for The New York Times was interactive. So this "JavaScript Journalism" needs to be a consideration in the design.
News organizations produce huge amounts of content. Other sites can have nice navigation and whitespace galore because they are trying to present their limited amount of new content in the best possible way. The design considerations for news are different.
People want to wade through news sites. So they return often. Sometimes they miss a day. There are topics that don't interest them. Think of a relative who starts reading the paper with the sports section and not the front page. This would speak to personalization. But people rarely want to personalize for themselves. They don't want to be programmers, they want it programmed for them.
Finally, people use many different devices and the experience should carry over from screen to screen. The cloud is not so much about storing data on remote serves as it is syncing the experience from device to device. This is a feature of nearly all popular apps like Dropbox, Evernote, email, etc. News needs to be offline first.
Home Page User Experience
This is what the User Experience should look like for news home page apps.
What is new for me? Show the new stories since my last visit. This does not mean hide the old stories, but highlight what is new since I visited three hours ago or since yesterday or last week. Don't waste my time with headlines I've already read. This is fairly simple to do.
Technical details:.Store in a cookie the timestamp of the last visit. Use a data-timestamp property for each article. Then use a short JavaScript routine to add a highlight class to each story that is new. In a prototype that I did, every story had a gray background except highlighted stories had a white background. Then sync this time stamp into a member's profile for syncing the experience across devices.
Show me the breadth of the news. Readers of newspaper sites are not told how many articles were published in the last 24 hours. In print, you know as soon as you pick up the paper. Show me lots of articles. Curate the order of the articles, not the ones I can see.
Show me that I'm up to date. With the paper you know when you finished reading every section. for many it is an important part of the news experience. So display a progress bar, or the like, showing how much of the news I've scanned and read. Give the experience of an accomplishment.
Yesterday's news. Contrary to the Rolling Stones' song, people do want yesterday's paper. If readers are on vacation for a week or two, they want to be able to get caught up. Techmeme does this almost perfectly. Click on the date (which is not obvious) on the Techmeme page and roll back time to any previous home page. Every news site home page should have this feature.
Timelines and storylines. Stories do not stand alone. Perhaps I missed the first story in the series. Or I missed the news of the bill that passed or the death of a important figure in the story. Don't make me feel dumb because I didn't read a story ten weeks ago.
Next article, please. I've never understood why news sites make it so difficult to read the next article. With the paper my eyes just scan to the next headline. After I scroll down to the end of an article, please show me the next article. Let me keep scrolling. No need to click. Use the same gesture used to read the article to read the next article.
Read me later. Sometimes I get busy. Let me save an article to read later. Even on a different screen. Storing the unique id of a story is not a difficult technical challenge. It gives the news site another visit which I'm sure the business people will love.
The mosaic of news. This all speaks to a layout of columns of articles like tweets in TweetDeck. For most newspapers there would be a column for each of the sections like Sports. If a reader frequently read a columnist or blogger, the personalization could add this as a new column. A list of articles could be filter by section, blog, author or any other metadata. Or even a search.
Most of the articles in a newspaper could be displayed on one page. Think of it as a single page web app for news. I called my concept app PostDeck. For Vox it could be VoxDeck. Other newspapers would be TimesDeck or TodayDeck. VoxDeck could even bring in a column from SB Nation and other Vox media.
Apps as news. Readers expect more than articles. Weather is a prime example. Columns don't have to be an index of articles. A column could be the weather app. Or breaking news app. Or twitter stream. Or election results. Or feedback. Or most frequently read. Or it could be a data driven story that has a long life.
Ads as news. Ads are broken on the web compared to print. I can clip an ad or coupon from the paper. I can turn back a page and re-read an ad. I know that every Sunday has my electronics flyer. Contrary to the common view, people want ads, not the intrusion. Put ads in a column, let people scroll through them. Make them searchable. Read them later. Make them social with comments. Challenge ad agencies to make ad apps for columns. Lots of room for innovation for the poor experience we get now. Just like in the paper make ads first class citizen with articles and apps.
Satisfy active readers. I don't follow baseball. As an active reader, let me customize the columns so I get hockey news but turn off baseball. Others might want all the stats of a live game as an app. Let me drag and drop the order of the columns. Let active readers customize and then feature their customization in promoting this news app.
Long live the news home page app
Home pages for news sites have a lot of life left in them. They just should be considered as news apps and we'll see a renaissance for news home pages.
Showing posts with label Washington Post. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Washington Post. Show all posts
Monday, October 27, 2014
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
The Washington Post Gains 10m Members
By offering free digital access to subscribers to other newspapers, The Washington Post just picked up 10m members. Paywalls change the business model of newspapers from subscribing readers to adding members. When Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post he purchased $175 million in membership. Having the credit card number of each digital reader (i.e., member) is of great value.
Nieman Journalism Lab and others wrote about The Washington Post offering free digital access to other newspapers. There is no such thing as a free lunch. So what does The Post gain by offering free digital access to local newspapers around the United States? Members in Texas, Honolulu, Ohio, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. According to The Financial Times, 10m members. This expands the audience for offers to members with credit cards on file. Steve Hills, president of The Washington Post suggested that it could be expanded to “any company that sells premium subscriptions.” This is the new membership business model.
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As a membership business, The Post will next follow the lead of associations, loyalty programs, unions and others. These organization make substantial money from the “member benefit” offerings. There is a whole industry that sells to these organizations and I’m certain they are calling on newspapers everyday. Expect to see The Post offer more than just a wine club. Credit cards, travel deals, insurance and more. And add staff to support this. “It pays to read The Post."
Nieman Journalism Lab and others wrote about The Washington Post offering free digital access to other newspapers. There is no such thing as a free lunch. So what does The Post gain by offering free digital access to local newspapers around the United States? Members in Texas, Honolulu, Ohio, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. According to The Financial Times, 10m members. This expands the audience for offers to members with credit cards on file. Steve Hills, president of The Washington Post suggested that it could be expanded to “any company that sells premium subscriptions.” This is the new membership business model.
dddd
As a membership business, The Post will next follow the lead of associations, loyalty programs, unions and others. These organization make substantial money from the “member benefit” offerings. There is a whole industry that sells to these organizations and I’m certain they are calling on newspapers everyday. Expect to see The Post offer more than just a wine club. Credit cards, travel deals, insurance and more. And add staff to support this. “It pays to read The Post."
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
My 18 months working at The Washington Post
December 19, 2013.
Yesterday was my last day as an employee of The Washington Post. I completely enjoyed working for a great institution. I've dedicated nearly the last 20 years to two foundations of democracy: newspapers and public education. The last 18 months at The Washington Post were great.
I’m very proud of the work I did on the mobile web version of The Washington Post. You can see it when you go to http://m.washingtonpost.com on your phone. On a desktop browser you can see it by going to http://m.washingtonpost.com/settings and setting mobile version. I came in late to the project and the initial development work was done by David Young and Thad Cox. I learned a lot from both of them. We were part of a great team. No other paper’s mobile web application supports offline reading as well as The Washington Post and has the performance this feature provides.
Live sports scores and other content like Post Pulse and Topicly are displayed in this version using wpwidgets. This is a technology that I developed and expect it will be used as long as the current platform is supported. It was one of my better accomplishments.
I am very proud of the implementation of comments on mobile web. I love the performance and the clean display using Joey Marburger’s design and Sean Soper’s excellent Argus platform. I came away believing adopting graph database technology to comments will revolutionize web comments especially with paywalls. That is for the future.
Another accomplishment was the 2012 Election Night coverage that was designed specifically for mobile. I had the privilege of working with the very talented Katie Park on this project. Nodejs was used on the backend to convert the Associated Press election results API into SVG maps. These were then converted into PNG maps on Amazon Web Services for mobile. Various techniques were used to take advantage of cache but still provide the latest results. One take away was that no news organization can report on elections without JavaScript.
Duncan Graham became a good friend at The Post. We worked together to host The Washington Post JavaScript Users Group. It was out of these meetings that I developed the concept of JavaScript Journalism and hoped that it could be a common vision for the newsroom and IT.
The final item I want to mention is the concept app called PostDeck. I’ll write up more details in a separate post. I completely enjoyed developing this design and tablet vision of a large newspaper. The feedback from my fellow developers was appreciated.
The Washington Post is very innovative and the entire industry has huge opportunities ahead. I wish my former colleagues the best. Thanks to all the staff, not just the ones mentioned above, for a great 18 months. I’ll miss working with you and look forward to seeing your great work for years to come.
I will be moving on to develop my own apps at http://daly-apps.com. I'll post more about these web apps separately.
Yesterday was my last day as an employee of The Washington Post. I completely enjoyed working for a great institution. I've dedicated nearly the last 20 years to two foundations of democracy: newspapers and public education. The last 18 months at The Washington Post were great.
I’m very proud of the work I did on the mobile web version of The Washington Post. You can see it when you go to http://m.washingtonpost.com on your phone. On a desktop browser you can see it by going to http://m.washingtonpost.com/settings and setting mobile version. I came in late to the project and the initial development work was done by David Young and Thad Cox. I learned a lot from both of them. We were part of a great team. No other paper’s mobile web application supports offline reading as well as The Washington Post and has the performance this feature provides.
Live sports scores and other content like Post Pulse and Topicly are displayed in this version using wpwidgets. This is a technology that I developed and expect it will be used as long as the current platform is supported. It was one of my better accomplishments.
I am very proud of the implementation of comments on mobile web. I love the performance and the clean display using Joey Marburger’s design and Sean Soper’s excellent Argus platform. I came away believing adopting graph database technology to comments will revolutionize web comments especially with paywalls. That is for the future.
Another accomplishment was the 2012 Election Night coverage that was designed specifically for mobile. I had the privilege of working with the very talented Katie Park on this project. Nodejs was used on the backend to convert the Associated Press election results API into SVG maps. These were then converted into PNG maps on Amazon Web Services for mobile. Various techniques were used to take advantage of cache but still provide the latest results. One take away was that no news organization can report on elections without JavaScript.
Duncan Graham became a good friend at The Post. We worked together to host The Washington Post JavaScript Users Group. It was out of these meetings that I developed the concept of JavaScript Journalism and hoped that it could be a common vision for the newsroom and IT.
The final item I want to mention is the concept app called PostDeck. I’ll write up more details in a separate post. I completely enjoyed developing this design and tablet vision of a large newspaper. The feedback from my fellow developers was appreciated.
The Washington Post is very innovative and the entire industry has huge opportunities ahead. I wish my former colleagues the best. Thanks to all the staff, not just the ones mentioned above, for a great 18 months. I’ll miss working with you and look forward to seeing your great work for years to come.
I will be moving on to develop my own apps at http://daly-apps.com. I'll post more about these web apps separately.
Tuesday, August 06, 2013
Bezos Getting $175 Million Membership Value in The Washington Post
With the purchase of The Washington Post by Jeff Bezos, he is acquiring a 'membership' alone that has a value of $175 million. He is also purchasing many other assets for his $250 million.
For the last year at The Washington Post, I've argued internally that paywalls turn readers into members of The Washington Post. Paywalls turn newspapers into membership organizations. In other words, the subscriber database transforms into a very valuable digital membership database. For many internet companies this is their primary value. The membership profile of a Washington Post reader is richer and thus much more valuable than most internet memberships.
While paywall revenue is certainly valuable, the real value in a paywall is acquiring a credit card number for each member. Having a credit card on file for readers completely transforms the newspaper business model.
Paywalls turn newspapers into e-commerce operations.
This is easily understood in looking at how digital ads will change. Any ad can now have a 'buy me now' button with a credit card on file. This substantially reduces the 'friction' in converting an ad viewer into a customer. The staff selling ads now has a much different job selling a product into a 'news app store'.
In a print newspaper you read the same ads as everyone else. When reading a newspaper online the ads (or products) are targeted based on your profile. The better the profile, the better the targeting and the value of the ad. With a credit are on file the profile is even richer. The depth of a newspaper membership is a marketer's dream.
The online profile also allows The Washington Post to be competitive in some markets again. For example, many believe that newspapers have lost the classified ad business to Craigslist. The Post's membership profile is stronger that Craigslist leading to several opportunities.
The value of a credit card on file can be approximated. In the tablet marketplace revenue comes not only from the hardware sale but from app store sales. When HP launched their ill-fated tablet, having a credit card on file was so valuable that they gave away $50 in merchandise just for putting a credit card on file in their app store. When Android was launched, Google received a lot of criticism because of the low number of customers with credit cards on file for their app store. Amazon was able to instantly create an app store because they had credit cards on file. This is ample evidence of the value of having a online profile with a credit card on file.
How did the $175 million figure come from? I believe that The Washington Post can easily get credit cards on file for one million members. This is based completely on extrapolating publicly available circulation numbers and online traffic. This is not based on any internal numbers. (In fact I have very limited access to any numbers at all in my job.) The number of subscribers and revenue from Apple's app store are available. These rough numbers suggest an estimated contribution of $175 per member to Apple's valuation. So I used this figure to value The Washington Post membership. While the $175 figure may be high, the member estimate is probably low.
I think Bezos purchase of The Washington Post will accelerate the transformation of the newspaper business model that I think was inevitable. The biggest personnel impact will be in expanding IT department because of the importance to build the online profile. Next, as I explained above, will be a change in advertising sales.
My work at The Washington Post is coding primarily for mobile web. You see my work when you visit washingtonpost.com with your phone's browser. I've took this job just over a year ago. The views here are my own.
Personally, I'm excited to see the newspaper transformation from the inside. The Washington Post is known to foster innovation. Many people will now be interested in working here and I'm already here.
For the last year at The Washington Post, I've argued internally that paywalls turn readers into members of The Washington Post. Paywalls turn newspapers into membership organizations. In other words, the subscriber database transforms into a very valuable digital membership database. For many internet companies this is their primary value. The membership profile of a Washington Post reader is richer and thus much more valuable than most internet memberships.
While paywall revenue is certainly valuable, the real value in a paywall is acquiring a credit card number for each member. Having a credit card on file for readers completely transforms the newspaper business model.
Paywalls turn newspapers into e-commerce operations.
This is easily understood in looking at how digital ads will change. Any ad can now have a 'buy me now' button with a credit card on file. This substantially reduces the 'friction' in converting an ad viewer into a customer. The staff selling ads now has a much different job selling a product into a 'news app store'.
In a print newspaper you read the same ads as everyone else. When reading a newspaper online the ads (or products) are targeted based on your profile. The better the profile, the better the targeting and the value of the ad. With a credit are on file the profile is even richer. The depth of a newspaper membership is a marketer's dream.
The online profile also allows The Washington Post to be competitive in some markets again. For example, many believe that newspapers have lost the classified ad business to Craigslist. The Post's membership profile is stronger that Craigslist leading to several opportunities.
The value of a credit card on file can be approximated. In the tablet marketplace revenue comes not only from the hardware sale but from app store sales. When HP launched their ill-fated tablet, having a credit card on file was so valuable that they gave away $50 in merchandise just for putting a credit card on file in their app store. When Android was launched, Google received a lot of criticism because of the low number of customers with credit cards on file for their app store. Amazon was able to instantly create an app store because they had credit cards on file. This is ample evidence of the value of having a online profile with a credit card on file.
How did the $175 million figure come from? I believe that The Washington Post can easily get credit cards on file for one million members. This is based completely on extrapolating publicly available circulation numbers and online traffic. This is not based on any internal numbers. (In fact I have very limited access to any numbers at all in my job.) The number of subscribers and revenue from Apple's app store are available. These rough numbers suggest an estimated contribution of $175 per member to Apple's valuation. So I used this figure to value The Washington Post membership. While the $175 figure may be high, the member estimate is probably low.
I think Bezos purchase of The Washington Post will accelerate the transformation of the newspaper business model that I think was inevitable. The biggest personnel impact will be in expanding IT department because of the importance to build the online profile. Next, as I explained above, will be a change in advertising sales.
My work at The Washington Post is coding primarily for mobile web. You see my work when you visit washingtonpost.com with your phone's browser. I've took this job just over a year ago. The views here are my own.
Personally, I'm excited to see the newspaper transformation from the inside. The Washington Post is known to foster innovation. Many people will now be interested in working here and I'm already here.
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