The morning after the US midterms, I checked 16 US and UK news sites to see how they asked readers to subscribe. The subscribe buttons were all there. But not one had an election subscribe message on its homepage, and only five had any sales copy written for the election.
Plenty of you got in touch after I wrote Why news media failed at the midterms. So I set myself a challenge: what would the ideal news article template look like if its job was to boost subscriptions?
The answer is an annotated wireframe with 13 elements. It covers:
- a message tied to the news moment, above the masthead
- the facts above the paywall and your own analysis below it
- a free account step before payment
- gift articles and a “read next” picked for each reader
It’s too big to show properly here, so it lives on my website, where you can zoom in to full size.
One caveat before you reach for the pitchforks 😊 : not every reader sees every element. A first-time visitor gets the paywall and a free sign-up. A subscriber gets no sales pitch at all. The article explains who sees what.
This is very much for discussion, so reply and tell me what I’ve missed!