Stop adding hay to the haystack
Facebook and fewer stories behind rise in web traffic, says Telegraph chief
The Telegraph has recently seen an upswing in digital traffic. This is attributed to focusing more attention on how they use Facebook, and publishing less content in general, and using data to “decide what to stop doing”.
Users normally come to a website to complete a specific task, which is normally about finding a particular piece of information. This can be likened to searching for a needle in a haystack. When we add more content to the website, we are just making the haystack bigger.
By now you don’t need me to tell you how big the University of St Andrews website is. One of our aims is to keep a lid on the amount of content on the web.
We actually created that huge traffic jump in June producing fewer stories, not more. On the day-to-day operational side, the team has made dozens of changes that add up to the newsroom working better and more efficiently. Seemingly mundane things make a huge difference – things such as better planning, more creative story conferences, and using audience data to decide what to stop doing.