Eva Editor

Typically, the main responsibility of a front-page editor is to maximize the throughput of traffic that comes to the front-page. Throughput can be defined as the conversion of page views to clicks. A conversion happens when someone who is viewing the front page clicks on something on that page (i.e. an article).

On a high-traffic news page, this is a challenge that demands continuous attention throughout any period of time when readers are  active.

Here are some interrelated factors that are critical for front-page throughput:

• age
• relevance / presentation
  
• positioning

Your typical reader visits your front-page several times per day, perhaps even per hour. If she sees the same stories every time she opens the front-page, she will be encouraged to extend the delay before her next visit.

The modern internet user has a short attention span. Front-page editors therefore often want to present each piece of content (article leads) in a way that both catches the reader's attention and maintains the relevance of the content that lies behind (in the article). She will do this by manipulating the title, lead text and picture to optimize the balance between getting attention and maintaining relevance to the article's content.

Last, but not least, a front-page editor is concerned with the positioning of stuff on her page, both with respect to age (sometimes newer material is displayed closer to the top) and relevance (sometimes related material is presented in the same area). At the same time, the front-page should maintain a presentation that is aesthetically pleasing, usable and navigatable.

In addition, the front-page editor may be responsible for ad conversion from her page. Keeping the other challenges in mind, ads must also be optimally placed.

Let's take a look at some LinkPulse screens to get an idea at how our Editor, Eva, might go about using LinkPulse to help her with her daily duties. The screenshots are from a Norwegian regional newspaer (mre.no), so the names of the stories and categories may not make sense to you. Imagine in this first picture that the Story column contains juicy titles of news articles from Eva's front-page.

The Editors Eye report shows us a top list of the most active stories right now, with respect to a given front-page (or the whole site, if you so choose). The stories are ordered according to clicks from a given front-page to each story in the last 15 minutes.

There are three columns containing numbers. The "Today" column is simplest, it just gives you the total number of clicks to that story (from your front-page) today.

The other two columns contain numbers that are computed so they can be directly compared. The Average column gives the average number of clicks per hour for the past three hours, while the State now column gives the total clicks in the last 15 minutes multiplied to one hour. This way, the two numbers can be compared to indicate if the story's popularity is rising or falling.

The indication of popularity is further illustrated by a trending arrow, which is green and upwards-pointing if the trend is positive (State now is greater than Average by 10% or more), it is red and downwards-pointing if the trend is negative (State now is lower than Average by 10% or more) or grey and rightwards-pointing if the trend is neutral (State now is within 10% above or below Average).

As a front-page editor I would be particularly observant of the stories with green and red arrows. The green ones should remind me to be especially careful to make sure that they stay green as long as possible. For example, if a story that has low priority on the front-page (small spot, low position) shows a persistent positive trend, perhaps it is time to consider that story for a more prominent position.

Similarly, stories with a negative trend might indicate the end of a story's life-time. Consider moving such stories away from prominent positions to free up space for more valuable stories.

You'll learn to notice when a story doesn't behave the way you expect. That's when you should consider experimenting with titles, lead texts or images (different cropping?). Follow that story closely by selecting the checkbox in the last "eye" column and clicking "Watch selected stories":

This gives you a minute-by-minute rendering of clicks to that article for the past hour. If you took note of when you made the change to the article, and you expect it to make a difference to the traffic, it should show up here (either as a rise if you did the right thing, or as a fall if you didn't). In this case, it didn't seem like anything of interest happened, since any sharp increase or decrease in traffic didn't persist over time. It just seems to be a general downwards trend.

You can also see everything from the perspective of categories:

These categories may not make sense to you, but imagine that they represents different positions, or slots, on your frontpage, independent of what is published in those positions.

 Finally, using the ClickFlow report, we can get detailed information about stories and categories at the same time, and this report includes historical data. Look out for soon-to-come information about the ClickFlow report.

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