• by Melynda Fuller , July 2, 2018

Recently, legacy newspapers like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have become fully fledged digital media empires, harnessing the power of the digital publishing landscape.  

In an effort to ensure The Wall Street Journal’s digital products were satisfying to its audience, Suzi Watford, WSJ executive vice president-Chief Membership Officer and Matt Murray, WSJ editor in chief, suggested the company build a solid product strategy and act as the project sponsors. Kerry Lancaster, WSJ’s customer intelligence director, led the work. 

In order to create a customer-first media experience, The Wall Street Journal joined with Kadence International to undertake a massive research study that included over 5,000 quantitative interviews, user experience labs, online behavior tracking and focus groups.  

Some of the business objectives that came out of the study: enhancing the digital experience, delivering content that drives customer value and winning new audiences. 

The findings have now become the cornerstone of the brands digital product strategy.

First, The WSJ applied what it had learned to its app. 

Maria Peterson, vice president of customer intelligence at Dow Jones, told Publishing Insider: “We’ve seen performance improve across all the aspects we were targeting. The app is more relevant — more members use it, and the app is habit-building. When our members are using the app, they go both deeper and broader, engaging with more pieces of content.”

In fact, engagement has increased by 400% and the user base has grown by 10%.  

According to Peterson, the group identified three key reading modes — priority, discovery and exploratory modes — that readers transition between, depending on the time of day and their news needs.

“These modes translate into specific actions people take in our products (for example: skimming headlines, reading related articles, or using elements of the navigation) that helped us pinpoint where we could enhance specific features of the app to improve the overall user experience,” she said. 

Going forward, the company will follow six core principles, cross-platform, based on the study to guide its product and content development. 

These principles focus on “preserving and strengthening our product ecosystem; designing for our reading modes; driving membership across all we do; elevating our insight and analysis; applying rich content where appropriate; and delivering content with real utility for our audiences."