Will updating site at night drive traffic?

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Comment by Howard Owens on November 28, 2008 at 9:04am

In any business, it's important to know what your strengths are. News web sites tend to have their strength during the work day, when most workers cannot get their news from radio or TV, but they are in front of a computer all day. You want to feed those people a constant stream of news, because those are the people you can hook in to habitually checking the site. The other hours of the day, not so much. Now, if there's a really big breaking story during off hours, that's one thing. You want to jump on that. But as a matter of routine, it's not really worth the investment of extra staffing during off hours . You will get better ROI doing more posting during peak hours.

Four or five years ago, a lot of newspaper web sites experimented with day parting and found the non-peak incremental gains just didn't make it worth the effort. I don't think any newspaper web sites day part any more. (Day-parting: changing he content or style of the site to match a different kind of audience; for example, more entertainment stories for the evening audience.)

Comment by Joe Ruiz on November 26, 2008 at 10:21pm

Travis and Brianne,

With that, you probably have to evaluate the numbers to see whether there's more traffic with multimedia content or site updating at night. Are people really into the multimedia work or is there a higher ratio of people coming back at night and browsing more of the site?

I would also look at your competition. If there's no evening coverage on the other news sites, you can secure those viewers with content they can't get elsewhere.

Believe me, I know about problems with staffing numbers... our Web site is a two-man show, and we're not even staffed on the weekends (we have a nationwide hub that helps out and we're always on-call for big stuff).

Knowing that your posting advance copy and providing a service at night is making me lean toward keeping you nightside.

Comment by Travis Hay on November 26, 2008 at 5:40pm

Hi, I'm the Web reporter this post was written about so I wanted to chime in for a quick second.

@ Dave Brooks: I update the site with a mix of wire copy and advance versions of reporter's copy in the evening. Typically between 60 and 80 percent of our local copy for the next day is posted by me before 8 p.m. which is well after most reporters' deadlines at 4 or 5 p.m. for next day copy

@ Carlos Virgen: I've been in this role for about six months. I started updating the site in the evening on a regular basis about two months ago. I think there has been positive change and in increase in Web traffic in the p.m. but I don't have the analytics to back that up.

@ Joe Ruiz: I don't think our Web presence during the day, as far as producing and posting multimedia content goes, is adequate. However, I don't have a lot of opportunities to create content in the p.m. It's a tricky situation considering whether to decide to have me create content during the day and abandon my p.m. updating and maintenance of the site, or to keep my focus on what happens in the p.m. in an effort to keep the site fresh and drive traffic. Unfortunately we don't have the resources here to operate a "digital news desk" (we've got about 25 reporters, eds and photogs combined) so I'm it when it comes to someone focusing exclusively on creating "digital news."

Comment by Dave Brooks on November 26, 2008 at 1:03pm

Updating with what? Does he/she just post AP copy or other generic stuff or do reporters feed advance versions of their copy?

Comment by Angela Dice on November 25, 2008 at 6:09pm

We're an AM paper so we do have people here at night, and half our stories get posted around 5 p.m. with another round after 9 p.m. from sports. A majority of our traffic still comes in around the lunch rush, but once people figured out we were posting late, they started coming late too. Talked to a sister paper in Abiline (I think), and he was telling me they stagger posts at 11, 2 and 5 and promote the hell out of it in the paper, and sure enough, people started coming at those times. I think post a lot during general web peak traffic times, but continue to post, and they will come.

Comment by Carlos Virgen on November 25, 2008 at 5:40pm

We're in a similar situation being a P.M. paper. However, we don't have anyone in the evening. I second Ruiz' comment - If you have the luxury of having someone and it doesn't take away from any other coverage, I say keep at it. I firmly believe that the community will catch on and realize that they can get news from your site at all hours - breaking news, etc. We'd love to be in that position. What do your stats say? How long has the person been onboard? Has there been a change?

Comment by Stephanie Romanski on November 25, 2008 at 5:36pm

I guess it depends on your paper's goals. Mine keeps stressing the 24/7 news cycle that we'd eventually like to move to with news going up constantly. We're told that when the readers come to our site and see fresh, updated content, it's only logical that they would remember that when they're looking for breaking news and come back.

I think there are definitely trends in viewing times, but in a wider audience, people check new sites any time, not just at break times, or early evenings. And I'd say that since you're an afternoon paper, you probably have more people coming in the evening to read the latest updates than a morning paper. So it sounds to me like @travhay is serving an excellent purpose. And I'd LOVE to have someone doing that here at my paper.

I think if you just keep updating the site as much as possible, eventually your readers are going to be "trained" (disliking using that word though) to come to you for information. I don't think you need to stick to the bell curve.

Comment by Joe Ruiz on November 25, 2008 at 5:29pm

As I said via the tweets, I'm in a different situation since I work at a TV station's Web site, but I have noticed our curve has adjusted since I've been here. Prior to my arrival, it was a one-man show.

It's helped us get a jump on the competition (very competitive market with two TV stations, one newspaper online and a third TV station to come online in January... they were previously teamed with the newspaper on their site) with breaking news, wire, longer stories that I can work on between shows, etc.

From what I know from the outside at the paper's site (an A.M.), they have a "digital news desk" staffed with re-write and various editors who keep the site fresh at night. I don't know specific numbers, but I would venture to say they vary as ours have when we break news rather than wait for the fresh shift to arrive.

To answer your question, I would ask whether you feel your current dayside coverage is adequate. If so, I think keeping a nightsider can only benefit your site without sacrificing quality at more frequented times.