Setting out to quantify the impact of page load times, U.K.’s The Telegraph ran a series of experiments that served users varying delays in page load times. Oliver Palmer explains that the longer the delay, the less frequently users returned to the site and the fewer pages they viewed. For example, a delay of 4 […]

“Accessibility is a basic human right,” says Google’s senior manager of accessibility engineering Eve Andersson. “It benefits everyone.” Though Andersson’s team focuses on how to make Google’s products just as usable for those with disabilities as those without, that focus creates a better product for all users. For example, autocomplete and voice controls are features […]

Because digital subscriptions are key to its business model, the Financial Times is letting readers into the website redesign process, incorporating their feedback into the process. So far, it’s learned that readers find site speed and the ability to personalize the website important. Readers also preferred to have small video units lower on article pages. […]

The Washington Post is pitching its Arc CMS to other news organizations, with the pitch that it provides the tools for everything a publisher needs to do, in exchange for a fee based on the amount of data used. And, if that’s successful, Washington Post chief information officer Shailesh Prakash argues that Arc could totally […]

After talking to editors and hearing a need for a tool to find older articles that people may have forgotten about, the Vox Media product team built a bot to solve the problem. The team chose to build a Slack bot, making it easier for editors to use the bot within their existing workflows. An […]

As long as there has been software to update, there have been release notes, Slack’s Anna Pickard writes. Those notes have never had a large readership, but Pickard says it’s still important to Slack to make sure those notes are understandable for readers with as little jargon as possible and have something of value in […]

The Washington Post released a set of tools last week designed to make its longer stories easier for readers to complete, including a bookmark tool that lets readers save their spot in a story. The reader enters their email address, and the Post will send them an email with a unique URL that will allow […]

The most common definition of “product” is the final thing that a user sees, whether that’s an article or an app. But Vox is extending that definition to include features that are core to its operations, even if a user may not see it. For example, Vox includes its server performance because it affects how […]

You might have heard: Google’s answer to Instant Articles, Accelerated Mobile Pages, officially launched Wednesday (Silicon Valley Business Journal) But did you know: Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages can load mobile web pages as much as 85 percent faster than a typical mobile web page, but a significant challenge for publishers is the need to maintain […]

Looking at the role of product managers in the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal newsrooms, Mădălina Ciobanu explains how product managers help newsrooms improve their workflows and work in a more efficient manager. WSJ’s head of news products says: “The product person is really thinking about why we are doing that specific thing and […]