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Minal Bopaiah

UX Innovation: Abandoning Page Views (and Slideshows) for Infinite Scrolling

News, Technology /

When designing content-heavy websites, Web designers and publishers frequently opt for breaking articles into multiple pages. This reduces load time and increases page view counts — a metric often used to sell advertising. In addition, the popularity of image-driven content leads many sites to create embedded slideshows. (Downloadable slides, on the other hand, are more user-friendly than embedded slideshows, which take longer to load and are hard to skim.) But two separate articles on user experience best…

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Washington Post Debuts Paywall With Best and Worst Practices

News, Subscriber Acquisition /

The Washington Post debuted its paywall and digital subscription plans last week, with a mix of best and worst practices. The Post’s website served up a banner pencil ad on the homepage advertising the new digital subscriptions, wisely not calling it a paywall or meter (see below). Clicking on the ad got a visitor to the conversion page. Here, The Post had a mixed design. It employed certain best practices, such as highlighting a subscription plan and…

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The One Critical Position Legacy Publications Should Create When Transitioning Online

Business Services, Business Strategy, News, Technology /

With Newsweek bombing its digital transition, and The Washington Post demonstrating a decent, but not optimized, approach, it’s worth discussing how legacy publications can make the transition to a digital world easier on themselves. One thing I’m noticing more and more is the creation of new roles, like NatGeo giving its Editor-in-Chief dominion over print and digital content. But while aligning digital and print is almost always a smart move, new media requires more innovation that…

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Using Behavioral Ads? You Need to Follow These 2 Critical Regulations

News, Subscriber Acquisition, Technology /

Behavioral targeting (aka behavioral advertising) can be a great way to sell subscriptions or increase member engagement. But if you’re using behavioral advertising, then you’re required to follow the self-regulatory principles agreed upon by a consortium of marketers associations. These guidelines are meant to help online businesses using behavioral targeting to regulate themselves so that the government doesn’t have to. By avoiding government regulation, online businesses are able to evolve and innovate more quickly in their…

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Why Nonprofit News Sites Need to Adopt a Subscription Business Model

Business Strategy, FInance, News, Technology /

The Pew Research Center’s recent report on Nonprofit Journalism details the pervasive lack of business models in this sector, despite the growing adoption on nonprofit news models by many news sites and start-ups. Yet, the adoption of a subscription or membership model to establish recurring revenues is glaringly lacking in their recommendations. To be clear, a nonprofit is mainly defined by what it does with its revenues, i.e., they must be invested back in the organization,…

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Washington Post Deploys Journalists and Bloggers to Market Upcoming Metered Paywall

Industry Announcements, News, Subscriber Acquisition /

Handling a digital transition can be tricky, with a botched migration spelling certain death for some legacy publications. But, on the flip side, a well-managed transition can be your best onboarding tactic for not only acquiring digital subscribers, but keeping them as well. The Washington Post seems to be taking a page from The Day’s playbook in managing its upcoming metered paywall implementation. WashPo started with a news story in their business section on March 18,written…

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Projected Growth for Digital Revenues Across 4 Major Media Industries

Business Services, FInance, News /

The US newspaper industry is expected to decline by 2.5% over the next five years, while the music and consumer magazine industries are holding steady, and the business-to-business information market is expected to grow by 2.5%, according to recent research released by PwC (formerly PricewaterhouseCoopers). Newspaper Industry The decline in advertising means that newspapers might see a 50/50 split in ad/subscription revenues by 2017, according to the report, which also predicts that digital will account for 11%…

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Netflix Dominates Subscription Video On-Demand Niche

News /

Despite the fanfare concerning the recent $1 billion bids for Hulu, Netflix still dominates the subscription video on-demand niche. According to a recent report by The NDP Group, Netflix accounts for 90% of all streaming video online during Q1 of 2013. Within video streaming, television viewing accounted for 80% of streaming activity by consumers. Within that 80%, Netflix accounts for 89% of streaming activity, while Hulu commands just 10% of market share for television streaming and Amazon…

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Case Study Lessons: Use Google ‘Standout’ Tag to Highlight Featured Content in Search Rankings

News /

Oftentimes, publishers have original reporting, investigative pieces, or simply in-depth content that they want to feature as special to readers and audiences. But often this content is tagged and SEO-ed much like every other piece of content. But while interviewing John Waller from Structured Credit Investor for this week’s Case Study on Subscription Site Insider, he had a great and simple trick for highlighting featured content: using Google’s “standout” HTML tag. This one line of code can…

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Did Newsweek’s Decline in Subscriptions Cause Its Demise?

FInance, News, Subscriber Acquisition, Subscriber Retention /

As I wrote last week, Newsweek’s botched digital transition has put the legacy publication back on the auction block. But that botched transition was preceded by a steep decline in subscriptions, according to figures from the Pew Research Center. Since 2007, Newsweek has lost more than 50% of its print subscribers. And while print magazines across the board have been struggling to maintain subscribers, look how Newsweek compares to TIME magazine: Clearly, there’s a way for legacy…

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