Put yourself in the audience's shoes to deliver a great digital experience PLUS @wnip looks at the major changes in the relationship between big tech and publishers in 2022

July 05, 2022

Alan Hunter has an excellent piece about how to build great reading experiences on digital platforms. The former head of digital at The Times and Sunday Times skewers some old thinking about the digital habits of audiences.

To do this, he espouses a philosophical but foundational approach to building great digital products: You have to put yourself in the readers' (or audiences') shoes. I remember when I first got a peek into audience research when I was a young digital correspondent with the BBC. We had an audience research firm doing some work in DC, and I got to sit on some sessions and watch how users used our website. It was incredibly illuminating. They were struggling with things that we took for granted because we had built the site.

Once you approach your work by solving the problems and understanding customer needs - the core of marketing and product management - then your point of view flips. Companies that suffer from poor performance have a product that they want to sell, and they seek buyers. Too often in journalism, I fear that this is our approach. We assume so much (social) value in what we do, that we're not clear on the needs of our audiences. It is one reason that we struggle in such a noisy information environment.

Right, back to Alan's points. He goes after a lot of tired print design elements that have crept into digital experiences, such as the pull quote, which really on serves to break up the article. He also pushes back on the idea of focusing on article length. It's well worth your time.

My friends over at What's New in Publishing take a look at major shifts in the fight between big tech and publishers. We're seeing legislative initiatives pop up in many countries after Australia moved to allow publishers to negotiate fees with major platforms. What are other countries doing? What is the industry doing?

Plus:

There could be a shift in dynamic amongst tech giants for digital ad revenue The relationship between publishers and big tech is a widely debated topic. Recently, we have seen more and more initiatives being taken and some first small victories coming to fruition in the fight with big tech. We take a look at what changes and …

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