Digital is more than just a website

As a digital publisher, it is easy to be tempted to give up on your career because of the dwindling revenues and seemingly low conversion rates for adverts and downloads nowadays. “I have created nice PDF e-Magazines but no one wants to download them”, “I have developed a mobile version of my print magazine but only a handful of my online audience subscribes” these are just but a few of the headaches that digital content creators have to go through almost every day.

In actual sense, though, it is still possible to monetize digital content. The problem is that digital versions of traditional print products are not what customers want. Past statistics support this. For instance, data from Alliance for Audited Media has previously shown that ePublications only represent 3.8% of total media circulation. Even for big publishers and well-known best sellers, online circulation only accounts for only 12% of the equation.

A Mindset Shift

Many content creators view digital as a technical challenge to solve. They operate with the old mentality that customers will automatically walk in provided you have a great website and lots of content. But this mindset needs to shift. Today’s consumers are looking for more than a digital edition of the traditional print. They have a new set of needs that can be sub-categorized in three areas: context, customization and curation as follows.

Context – Digital Customers Are Increasingly Looking For Relevant Context

Digital consumers are not willing to wait for months for the next magazine issue to arrive in the mail. They are bombarded by tonnes of content every day and might easily get distracted or change their mind about downloading your hyped PDF document if they think it is too complex. Presenting them with the right content, in good time and in the right format is what makes the difference. For instance, instead of sticking to an old static website, moving to a responsive design that conforms with different device screen sizes could make it easier for your potential customers to access your content. At the same time, minor tweaks such as improving page load time and enhancing UX by making processes such as checking out and signing up easier could also boost your ROI.

Curation – Digital Customers Dislike Clutter

With the amount of information on the web expected to increase by 500% over the next five years (and with supply clearly outstripping demand), the trend is to focus on supplying content that is professionally curated on the basis of bite-sized learning. This could mean anything from arranging your content into short course modules to adding a digest page to make it easier for readers to navigate the database in a simple and structured manner. So just before you publish dozens of new articles on your site, think about how you can structure it better so your audience can derive maximum value from it. Don’t just slap content on your site and hope that they are going to like it.

Customization – Digital Customers Expect Personalization

Long gone are the days of batch and blast marketing campaigns. Today’s online consumers are looking for a tailored digital experience (data from McKinsey confirms that personalization can increase ROI by up to 20%). Even some big boy companies have noticed the importance of personalization. For instance, the New York Times which publishes over 300 articles per day has employed a team of data scientists whose work is to model this content according to each reader’s theme preferences.

The science behind this is simple. You track the user’s history and show them more of what they are interested in. Well, this may sometimes require one to hire a data science team but there are always some short cuts. For instance, you can ask your visitors to identify themselves by filling a short quiz on your homepage e.g What Is Your Skill Level (a)Novice (b)Intermediate (c)Advanced. Alternatively, you can regionalize your website based on IP address or any other form of data that you may have. The end goal of customization is to present the consumers with timely content that is highly relevant with their needs.

Ready? Get Started

So just before you throw in the towel on digital, think again. Consider the options your company can take to boost retention, content value and user experience. Remember, the digital consumer is looking for content that is in context, professionally curated and most importantly one that is customized in line with their personal preferences. Just doing the ordinary may not be of much help in satisfying them.