Newsletter: focused user needs articles perform better

Hello there,

It’s been a while since I last quoted Dmitry Shishkin, so here we go:

“This research is your default answer to those who doubt the user needs approach: large sample, clear impact, diverse portfolio, statistically significant difference. If someone can find a better analogy than 'smoking gun', this is it.”

He’s referring to a study conducted by Ringier Media International (where he is CEO) in collaboration with smartocto. The central question:

Do user needs-focused articles perform better?

Before I tell you that the answer is yes, let me briefly explain what we mean by ‘focused’ articles.

News consumers’ needs can be categorised into four key drivers: facts, context, emotion, and action. A focused article is one that is written predominantly from one of these perspectives. Our analysis (using smartocto.ai) can determine whether an article is more than 60% centred on, for instance, providing context. When any article meets this threshold, we deem it ‘focused. We then group all such articles into one category and compare them against articles where no single driver is clearly dominant.

The results are unsurprising: across all key metrics, focused articles perform better.

In other words, if you, as a journalist, want to tap into the reader’s emotions and consistently emphasise that choice throughout your piece, it will be more effective than simply adding a touch of emotion to a factual news update.

The groundbreaking aspect of this research is that, for the first time, we can prove at the source level that a user needs approach works. In our whitepaper from two years ago, we demonstrated the impact a media company adopting user needs gets: achieving a better balance of needs across the website leads to improved overall results.

Logic already told us that if user needs work at the website level, they should work at the article level as well. Thanks to advancements in smartocto.ai’s analytical capabilities, we can now effectively categorise large data samples according to the user needs methodology. We apply this in the User Needs Labs project with FT Strategies or as a standalone service, such as in our recent collaboration with Der Spiegel. This allows us to hold up a mirror to newsrooms, showing them their strengths and weaknesses, what their audience is looking for, and where opportunities for improvement lie.

In this newsletter, we not only highlight the precise findings of the data study but also provide a simple demonstration of how phrasing influences an article’s focus.

User needs focus fosters loyalty

You can find all the results via the link below, but since this newsletter is read by our loyal followers, it’s worth highlighting what user needs mean for loyalty.

Loyalty, in the world of smartocto insights, means something very specific. We define loyal users as those who are ‘habitually highly engaged’. This means that they don’t just consume a lot of content, and they don’t just read regularly - it means that in any rolling fifteen day period, the loyal user will have visited your site at least eight times.

Metrics that reflect these principles all show stronger results for articles that are clearly focused on one of the user needs drivers.

How do you write a focused article? 

When writing articles, in addition to journalistic quality and relevance, it’s crucial to set an expectation for the website visitor and to meet that expectation. BBC teaser:

This headline creates the expectation that the article will explain why prices are increasing. Let’s put this headline into our User Needs Playground:

The system recognises what any reader would: we are about to get context. Now, let’s look at the opening sentences of the article:

Prices in the UK rose by 3% in the 12 months to January, a higher-than-expected jump than December, which takes inflation further away from the Bank of England's target.

The Bank moves interest rates up and down to try to keep inflation at 2%, and has cut three times since August 2024.

Announcing the latest cut, the Bank warned that it expected inflation to rise again in 2025.

Can the reader still expect an explanatory piece? How do they know? What they’re primarily getting here is a series of facts. If I feed these sentences into the User Needs Playground, along with the headline, the system now says:

At this point, no single user needs driver is above 60%. The picture becomes diffuse. If the article were to end here, it wouldn’t be a focused piece. Even if the full article were included, it would still appear to be caught between two different approaches.

That’s why it’s crucial, not just in the headline but also in the opening sentences, to guide the reader. It’s not enough to simply present important information; you must also make it clear which need you’re addressing. After all, the reader has entered the story with a specific expectation.

If you need help from a system that lets you get the proper focus, please contact us.

• The number of Substack email newsletters earning at least half a million dollars a year in subscriptions revenue alone appears to have doubled in two years, Press Gazette analysis has found.
• Since Donald Trump became the U.S. president, the public has been flooded with news. Vox taps into this sentiment with the promise in a newsletter: “The Logoff is a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life.”
• Following the United States’ announcement of hundreds of billions in investments in artificial intelligence, the European Commission is now also taking the initiative for a similar multi-billion injection into the sector.
• Jeff Bezos has tightened his grip on the editorial direction of The Washington Post. He no longer wants the free market to be criticised on the opinion pages, Niemanlab writes. As a result, the opinion editor has stepped down.

A slightly longer newsletter this time, to showcase the full scope of our new research. We understand that it might be most digestible for the more experienced reader, so if you’d like to dive in, feel free to check out this page or revisit our explanation of the user needs approach.

If you have any questions, just reply to this email.

Until next time!
Stefan ten Teije, Editor @ smartocto