Surveying your Audience

Harnessing the power of reader surveys to create a more engaging and user-driven article experience.

In today’s digital news landscape, staying ahead means truly understanding your audience. At The Salt Lake Tribune, we’re reimagining our article pages to better serve the evolving needs of our readers. Our mission? To enhance the user experience by integrating features and layouts that align with how readers interact with content today — not how they did yesterday.

Surveying Our Audience: A Step Toward Smarter Design

Understanding our readers begins with understanding their feedback. To gather actionable insights, we launched a comprehensive survey targeting both subscribers and non-subscribers. This survey aimed to uncover the types of content our audience values, and more importantly, what they don’t want to see on our article pages.

With over 400 responses collected, we used data analysis tools to identify patterns, ensuring that our findings were statistically significant and actionable. By evaluating confidence levels and margins of error, we ensured the reliability of our insights. Ultimately, the survey shaped our next steps in designing a new, user-centered article page.

Best Practices for Designing Effective Surveys

• Segmentation for Tailored Responses: By segmenting subscribers and non-subscribers, we could target each group with a customized survey experience, ensuring relevance and clarity.

• Frequency Control: We carefully controlled how often the survey appeared, limiting it to once every three days for returning visitors. This prevented survey fatigue while still gathering enough feedback.

• Clear, Concise Questions: We crafted easy-to-understand questions to gather actionable data while maintaining respondent engagement.