The CGweb Publisher receives only half of the engagement as the main news feed.
Make interface more intuitive, add photos, create community
Remains to be seen, but higher engagement rates are expected.
CGweb consists of a main feed which provides company wide news, and is written by our department’s editors. The Publisher feed consists of shorter articles, and announcements written by niche groups within the enterprise. Both are on the main page of our intranet site, yet the Publisher feed gets roughly half the engagement of the main newsfeed.
Because I work so closely with CGweb, it was important to interview associates who had no in depth association with the site. It was very helpful to understand an “outsider’s” perspective. The pull quotes below were very telling.
After interviewing associates, I used affinity mapping to find similar themes among users.
Insight 1: New and old associates alike exhibited confusion when I mentioned the word “publisher.” Although they see the feed every time they visit CGweb, they didn’t know that is what it is called.
Insight 2: Although all associates felt that it was easy to subscribe and unsubscribe to publisher items, no one could remember off of the top of their heads how to do it. New associates had no idea how to do it, or that the items that they saw in the publisher were controlled by a subscription process.
Insight 3: Some associates noted that a reason why they would click on a publisher item would be if the headline caught their eye, and went on to mention that that would be the only thing they’re able rely on, as there are no pictures to compliment the headline.
Insight 4: Nearly all associates consumed news online and on their phone, as opposed to other sources like TV or radio.
Insight 5: Many associates, new and old, used CGweb often, but primarily as an “intermediary” to get to somewhere else: to look someone up, to log their time, or to perform special functions.
However, “I’m too busy” was a common sentiment when asked if an associate spent time reading articles and Publisher feed items on CGweb.
Pandemic Office
An insight gained from user interviews was that there were two main types of associates: culturally engaged and culturally disengaged.
In order to better empathize with the user, I created a journey map. This was created using an amalgamation of several user flow tests.
Developers to implement suggested UI/UX changes for more intuitive userflow, including adding pictures to accompany headlines, changing location of the subscribe buttons, and adding the Publisher title and information icon to the feed.
Capital Group should consider a mobile app for daily news, as research shows that associates prefer to consume news in this manner.
Consider UI strategies for associates who are “too busy” to consume news on CGweb such as adding read time, and making it easier for associates to listen to articles instead of read them. Also consider promoting CGweb news through emails and web banners for more engagement.