By Doris Truong, The Washington Post

1. @doristruong | #NISWAW
Homepage strategies
from the U.S. capital

2. • The Washington Post recorded 53.5 million digital
unique visitors in July 2015, up 36% from 2014.
• 38 million mobile users (up 58%).
• More than 19.4 million desktop users (up 5%).
• 41% of total digital audience are millennials —
a demographic with rising engagement (Post-
branded outreach includes Snapchat).
@doristruong | #NISWAW

3. Homepage: 4 ‘zones’
• “In the News” cues a topic’s importance. Nieman
Lab reported in December 2014 that 5-25% of site
traffic comes from Google News.
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4. Top table
• The big stories of the day (usually on the left).
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5. • A set of related stories takes over the entire top
when there’s major news.
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6. • The “feature display,” usually on the right, can be
used for a topic that isn’t hard news.
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7. Newswell (or stream)
• This is a mix of news, opinion and features
immediately under the top table. Each of the
8 to 10 items gets prominent headlines,
thumbnail art and short descriptive blurbs.
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8. @doristruong | #NISWAW

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10. Downpage
• Topic areas that require little human oversight.
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11. Broad vs. Regional
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12. Code name: Rainbow
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13. Analytics
• The Post uses
Chartbeat, including
the heads-up display.
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14. • We regularly check the Chartbeat dashboard
for the top 20 trending article pages as a guide,
but that’s imperfect.
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15. What qualifies for
washingtonpost.com?
• We curate the homepage so it contains content
that is within our wheelhouse. U.S. politics, yes.
Fluffy kittens, no (usually).
• We do consider when something gets sideways
traffic: Does this meet homepage standards, or
will its audience find it on social?
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16. • We also consider overall traffic on an article. It’s
fairly normal for a highly read piece to remain on
the homepage for 24 hours but in different parts of
the page throughout the day.
• We try to consider the mix of stories currently on
the page. We aim for equal play between political
parties and favor news over features — however,
consumer interest stories (Does grilling meat
cause cancer?) do well.
• Breaking news will always trump any plans we
make for the day.
@doristruong | #NISWAW

17. A/B testing
• The Post receives
real-time numbers
when we use alternate
feature images or text
for the same article
on the homepage.
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18. The same headline
treatment is used
throughout (Germany
reduces Brazil to tears),
but one image clearly
outperforms the rest.
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19. Breaking-news alerts
• The Post drives traffic to the homepage by quickly
sending e-mail alerts (about four times the
number of subscribers receive our “national”
alerts vs.“local” alerts) as well as mobile push
alerts, which ping users with any version of the
app — including Apple Watch.
@doristruong | #NISWAW

20. Thank you (Dziękuję)
For more information: doris.truong@washpost.com
@doristruong | #NISWAW