Case Study: SLT

This case study examines The Salt Lake Tribune’s approach to better the article page, guided by survey insights on reader behavior and engagement.

The Salt Lake Tribune’s Director of Audience Analytics, Ian Swenson, highlighted that at the start of my survey with 251 responses at the time, that it only represented about 0.016% of the total readership of 1.54 million visitors that month. While this might seem like a small fraction, the sample of this size still would have provided about 90% confidence with a 6% margin of error due to the principles of statistical sampling.

Our result fell slightly below the scientifically accepted standard of 95% confidence and a 5% margin of error, but it was deemed acceptable for publication. However, we decided to extend the survey to reach approximately 400 responses, bringing the results closer to the standard and ensuring more accurate findings. In the end, our survey response rate of 416 responses gave us a 95.8% confidence level and a 4.8% margin of error, which is crucial when making design decisions that impact the user experience.

With these reliable insights, we were able to focus on what really matters to our audience. For instance, many readers expressed concerns over the presence of comments on articles, highlighting the need to either eliminate them or moderate them for a more positive environment.

Proper data analysis also involves visualizing the results through charts and graphs to make the findings more understandable and to clearly communicate the key insights to stakeholders. See some of our graphs from our survey below: