The secret sauce of the world’s biggest news site

The most popular news site in the world is MailOnline. The newspaper behind it, Daily Mail, is the most popular newspaper in the UK. I have a theory about what their secret sauce is. In 2008, neuro-psychologist David Rock published a model called SCARF. It describes 5 common ways to hack people’s motivation circuitry. It’s…… Continue reading The secret sauce of the world’s biggest news site

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Categorized as News, Product

News sites: driving users to the homepage

If you want users to flock to your homepage then you should figure out WHY. This awesome TED talk (nearly 20 million views) explains. IMO, the why for most news is… giving people something to talk about.

5 ways to improve your news site: tips from BuzzFeed, Upworthy and Huff Post

Upworthy “The right sidebar, paired with a minimal design, increased social shares by 28%.” (source) “when we added distractions, user sharing went down” (source) BuzzFeed “People got used to this idea that you had to dumb down content to be popular. In fact you’re more likely to spread smart content” (source) Huff Post Huff Post…… Continue reading 5 ways to improve your news site: tips from BuzzFeed, Upworthy and Huff Post