UX – News Site User Experience

By: Elizabeth Coffey, Marketing G2 Digital Marketing Specialist

One of the first interactions a reader has with most news sites is hitting that news organization’s paywall, a paywall that instantly tries to herd them into a long-term 6 to 12-month commitment. This is not an engaging user experience. Would you buy a car without taking it for a test drive first?

In this fast-paced world, people don’t even know where they’re going to be living in 12 months, let alone what they’re going to want to read in 12 months. Trying to force long-term subscriptions on people isn’t effective and makes readers bounce off your site like bullets ricocheting off of bullet-proof glass.

An A-La-Carte News Experience

Everywhere you look the trend digitally has been towards unbundling (Netflix, iTunes, Hulu, etc.). People want to consume content on their own terms and want to read news in an a la carte fashion by the article. They don’t want to be locked into an obligation that they’re paying for every month.

Think about it, there is a reason millions of millennials are cutting the cord and getting out of their long-term cable contracts. Let readers choose their own adventure and adopt a more user-friendly business model with a micropayment and mini-subscription platform like Flittz.

Flittz

Improve your on-site user experience with Flittz.

No longer will readers only be faced with a long-term, hard-stop subscription ultimatum, they’ll be able to purchase news by the article or in a series of articles around the same topic based upon what you know about that reader. Use Flittz alone or in concert with your existing subscription paywall to capture those leaving your site as a kind of ‘last-chance’ offer. Even offer it to ad-blocking readers who aren't generating any revenue for you or your news organization.

Can’t wait to hear more? Keep an eye out for more articles in our series about Flittz, new revenue streams, and the news industry.

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