What was the problem?
Stakeholders wanted to reduce the number readers coming to the site who then bounced after one article. The more time on site a person spends, the more they are likely to depend on that site as a primary source of information or entertainment. Once we got a user's attention, we didn't want to lose it.
- What is the best way to give users more of the content they want to read?
- How do we increase pages per session and time on site?
Bauer Xcel Media
- My role - Design, UX, A/B testing, data analysis
- Tools - Photoshop, Illustrator, Coda
- Platforms - Optimizely, Google Analytics
What was the approach?
Competitive Analysis
Recirc modules are a matter of course for most online publishers. A little competitive analysis would show opportunities relative to the BXM websites.
Experimentation, iteration, and optimization
As with most experiments, sometimes you win sometimes you lose. The winners were improved upon and the losers were dropped from future iterations.
- Changing the first word on in-copy links
- Bring the form to the top of the page - above the title, below the title, or after the second paragraph
- Next article teaser images on mobile
- Continue Reading button with alternate read suggestions
- Color blocks
- Thumbnails
- Related articles in the right rail
- Evergreen content over related articles
What were the learnings or compromises?
- Mobile users responded differently to different recirculation options as compared to desktop users.
- Linking to related galleries worked well after articles, and linking to related posts worked well after single page galleries.
- Thumbnails didn't increase pages per session at all.
- Data-driven recirculation suggestions worked great and saved editors from having to choose them.
- If recirculation links looked anything at all like the ads after the post, the users bounced.
- Trending or popular stories performed similarly to related topics.