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The South News Website

In this assignment we helped a traditional media news paper to evolve from a traditional media news outlet, from its roots on a paper only publication to a very successful website that in few weeks increased its visitors from a few hundreds to a thousand hundreds and finally reach relevance in a market that is unforgiving.

Prior our joining as a part of an effort to revive this newspaper, the site has a limited presence on social media something that it’s personal understood and we’re already using to promote their work to other news outlet.

The process involve a detail research of the local market and understand their own uniqueness, understand how the local people consume and share news and the purpose of this local news in their daily life’s

Client and Location

Traditional News Site,
Mexico City, Mexico
Jun 2017 to Dec 2017

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Summary

What was delivered and how

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— Services

Competitive analysis
User-interface design
Wireframing
Designing for Desktop
Developer collaboration

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— Deliverables

Team Wide collaborative effort
A fully-detailed journey map
Wireframes
User-interface designs
High-fidelity prototype

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— Outcomes

In the end, the result was amazing, we were able to grow the user base 300% in just few weeks, and with automated tools to deliver news on all mayor social media platforms and even the suscríbeles email we were able to achieve what this news media outlet never imagine, make the print paper more relevant than ever, and a website that complemented this perfectly.

Understanding the problem

A deep understanding of the problem was the first step

How we approach the limitations

This project was a very complex endeavor since it require a full scope approach on user experience, from designing the section pages to specific landing pages meant for events like elections or the violence that was crippling the state. We have to come with a full scope solution that cover all aspects of this project while keeping cost low and be smart about the kind of content we share on the site.

We choose Wordpress and a visual layout tool to be able to create the required pages and a design system strategy was created to address the need of multi content pages that change rapidly to adapt the customer needs



A Difficult Local market in need of a reliable News Service

The way the local population interacted with the news was a very specific one. On our user research we found that the market has unique challenges like a very small middle class and a huge chunk of their market was middle to low income so the perspective of generate income through ads was difficult. The local market relied on the news as a way to stay ahead in a city that was under a plague of violence, that affected the local economy.
We understood that sharing news only on the portal will be not enough and we relied on several tools that allow us to propagate the news to social networks to attract not only local people but also the nationwide market so the ads can become a way to finance this effort. 

Reaching success by creating a product modeled by its users

Understanding clearly the challenges of the local market was a must, refuse to acknowledge its uniqueness proven to be fatal in previous efforts to a deep understand of the users and their needs was vital to succeed on a market like this.
Modeling the content to adapt to the taste of the users was a paradigm shift for the management team used to the traditional printed media used to make that choice for the customer, something that in the time of the internet with so many options out there was a recipe for disaster. With user analytic data we were able to prove what the market was demanding, and that was a win by itself.


Reimagining the site as
a tool for business

The client has the impression that being in the internet was all they need to attract new customers and became overnight profitable and relevant. In the basic sense, the news site was already relevant, but lack of the critical mass to grow and make the business flourish at the level of well know local media sites was still out of reach.

A radical approach was needed to achieve sucess and, apart from the social media approach, we added a subscription mailer meant for the regular customers that want their news delivered to their inbox and with that huge database we started to create partner promotions that allow us to add an extra layer of revenue, and paired with Google Ads, targeted ads created the perfect storm to grow this projec

The Solution

An iterative and lean design approach

The user as the source of change

In a market that evolves quickly the access to quality user data was essential, we rely on two sources of analytic data, Google Analytics and a internal Wordpress Analytic plugin.

The data provided by this tools allow us to clearly be able to map the user preferences and provide the right kind of content they demand, and by creating a virtuous cycle that increased the revenue and created the space the newspaper need to grow.





Creating opportunities in a crowded market

The subscription mailer we added to our site allow us to create a way to engage with our users in creative ways, first we added the pop up notification option that allow our devoted users to know when a news note was posted on the website and invite the users to engage at detail in our site, then in the site the ads will be displayed in content they was already relevant to our user, then the mailer allow us to deliver subject based mailers that our customers can opt in based on their needs allowing us to know the kind of news they were more interested in interact creating a experience crafted for them in ways a newspaper can’t replicate. 

A News Site that evolved to adapt 

By using a dedicated design system and a real time testing strategy paired with a robust Wordpress template solution, we were able to deliver highly efficient page templates for every kind of content, from multimedia to author articles, each template was carefully designed and upgraded based on user analytics, crafted pixel by pixel to be relevant and remain relevant as the time goes.

The user data was the compass we used to craft every section of the site and only them as the guide to reach success.


Lean

One of the project principles was to be lean. To produce just enough of a designed project to prove a theory. The prototype served two purposes: one to support the developers, and two to act as a fall-back to demo to Leadership and reference files for developers.
Not forgetting about the sad paths, we give these just as much attention. Users don’t know they’re taking a path you didn’t want them to, so the design quality can’t taper. Working iteratively and simplifying the design allowed us to achieve these goals.

Outcomes

The data driven design choices as the way to evolve

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A deep user knowledge and the local market peculiarities

The prototype was delivered on time to be able to show features of the product to Leadership, Product Owners and Developers to base their aplication from and ironing some complex features.

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Content Modeling as way to grow our business

Having the chance to know second by second in all the sources the news and articles that make the biggest impact was pure gold, this allow us to better understand what the market need and our growth became tied to the constant change.

Project Disclaimer

The screens used on this Case Study are variants not used on the actual prototype due to NDA agreements and Copyright, the Design System Library and the Screens are based on a generic Bootstrap Library that mirror some of the functionalities of the actual delivered prototype but not all of them, and most features are obscured and modified on purpose to reflect features used on the Case Study.

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