Optimized User Journeys for Enhanced News & Media Experiences

All news and media organizations need a digital presence to thrive in today’s digital economy. For users, it creates a free and openly accessible information ecosystem. For organizations, the staggering market competition creates a challenge —- they must constantly strive to attract users and keep them engaged. 

With so many resources just a single tap away, one glitch is all it takes for a visitor to hop onto the next link. In addition to great content, you must also give them an immaculate user experience to keep them grounded and willing to take the next step.

When optimizing users’ digital experience (UX), news and media websites face unique challenges. Below we highlight five major ones:

 

Common Challenges to Optimal News Website UX

1. Accessible and User-friendly Content Structure

News websites have loads of content, images, and other forms of media. Without proper content structure and categorization, users can get overwhelmed easily.  They’ll bounce to a competitor if they can’t find what they’re looking for right away. 

Worse even, irrelevant and illogical interlinks will get you penalized by Google. You need to categorize your articles and include relevant and contextual internal URLs to rank with Google. 

2. Technical On-site SEO Challenges

Digital newspapers aren’t just content-heavy; their content is also time-sensitive. In most organizations, content publishers and editors must take on the added responsibility of content optimization. With all the tight deadlines and breaking news, missing alt-tags, improper content structure, ineffective headings, and lack of image optimization are all too common.  

3. Non-Intrusive Ads and Smart Paywall Placement

Thanks to the free and open internet, users are not as willing to pay for information as they once were with traditional newspapers. Intrusive ads and injudiciously placed paywalls are a nuisance that ruins the digital experience and compels users to simply switch to another site. 

Still, digital newspapers and media content platforms need ad revenue and subscriptions to operate and thrive. The key to this ad revenue dilemma is non-intrusive, relevant, and smart ad and paywall placement, which is an ongoing process. You must have the ability to constantly test and optimize ad placement. 

4. Seamless Team Coordination

Timely and continuous content delivery is imperative for news and media content websites. In such fast-paced environments, silos is a liability —- content creators, publishers, translators, editors, managers, and IT and marketing teams, all must always be on the same page and able to work simultaneously. For seamless coordination and collaboration, choosing the right CMS (Content Management System) from the get-go is crucial.

5. Integration and Upgrade Challenges

All enterprise-grade websites, including news and media content websites, need to carry platform upgrades. Many do not  perform timely integrations and upgrades. As a result, their news website UX ultimately falls short because of outdated modules and the resulting poor UX and system blackouts. This shouldn’t happen with the right technology, strategy, and planning. 

 

Deliver the Best UX for News Websites with Varbase

Varbase is Vardot’s Drupal 9 distribution and CMS for building, launching, and managing multilingual enterprise-grade websites. It has built-in enhancements, best practices, and all the essential features you need to create the best UI news websites to deliver a blemish-free digital experience to your readers. 

Here are the key features your ideal CMS must have to deliver a dynamic digital news and digital media experience. (Luckily, Varbase comes packed with all of these):

1. Layout Builder

Varbase’s Layout Builder comes with customizable layout templates, layout themes, content translation, and several other modules. It can work with structured and unstructured content and templated and free-form pages. Marketers can create and deliver dynamic and personalized landing pages highlighting key events or providing special coverage in minutes and without much technical knowledge. 

 

2. Schema Enhanced Structure

Varbase uses the Metatag Drupal module and Schema.org Metatag to help you maintain an organized content structure and implement SEO best practices in your digital news and digital media websites right from the launch. It automatically configures all meta tags for content across your website so that Google indexes and ranks it well.

To publish new content, moderators or publishers can simply choose a content type when adding new content and will get a form with predetermined fields for the particular category. They can fill in the relevant fields to ensure a proper content structure, always. 

3. Smarter Ad Placement

Varbase allows dynamic ad placement and management and integrates your website with Google AdSense. Simple controls allow you to enable, disable, and troubleshoot ads. Varbase also integrates an advanced analytics dashboard that gives marketers access to Google Analytics and consolidates performance tracking in a single glass-pane view. 

Another way Varbase helps organizations optimize their marketing efforts and improve customer experience is via account-based marketing automation. It integrates seamlessly with Campaign Studio — an open-source marketing automation solution —- which helps categorize users based on their intent and behaviors to help you create highly personalized marketing campaigns and communications.  

4. Seamless Workflows

With Varbase, you can configure roles and grant permissions for seamless content management. Members from different teams and departments can contribute simultaneously. Varbase also seamlessly integrates with systems linked with news agencies, social media, and other technologies that digital news and media websites often rely on. 

This way, editors and moderators can select, edit, and publish agency content directly through Varbase. In one click, marketing teams can auto-publish and share content across all social media. Finally, publishing teams can access and manage a robust media library to instantly find the digital assets they need.

5. Transparent Upkeep and Upgrade 

Varbase features multiple enterprise-grade, critical modules that are always up-to-date with the latest security updates and standards. It also meets the  WCAG 2.0 accessibility standards for disabled users across all devices and platforms. 

Varbase also provides multisite functionality, allowing you to build and manage multiple sites and microsites for news categories and domains through a single CMS. You can achieve a faster time-to-market while all websites share the same digital experience strategy.

Optimizing your digital media and news website UX is the only way to acquire and engage users and inspire a call to action. Your user journey and customer experience largely depend on your chosen CMS. Remember, user experience matters not only for your website visitors but also for the internal users involved. Schedule a Varbase demo today and consistently deliver on both fronts!