Exclusive Interview: DN Drives Reader Conversion with their Financial Section
Norkon Team In March 2023, Dagens Næringsliv, the leading financial newspaper in Norway, launched their new DN Investor, a portal where readers can get up to speed with real-time stock market data provided by Pulse, analytical insights, and related journalistic content all in one place.
The Investor portal serves just under 50,000 visitors daily – from private savers, investors, and analysts to professional brokers. Investor sets the precedent of where financial stock market data meets journalistic news.
Getting a Daily Pulse of the Stock Market
DN first launched its Investor portal in 2016 and immediately saw the benefits as increasingly more web visitors navigated to the platform daily for updates on various currencies, stocks, and funds that interested them.
The unique combination of real-time stock market numbers and related qualitative journalistic news that enlightens the reader has greatly contributed to adding value to DN’s subscribers.
Unlike professional terminals, DN Investor aims at providing all the relevant financial market information and journalism in a user-friendly, consumable and affordable way, catering to private individuals who are interested in learning more about investing their savings up to finance professionals who visit their site to stay informed on relevant financial news and journalistic content.
Today, Investor is a critical component of DN’s ecosystem as the web traffic to the Investor page accounts for one-third of DN’s total traffic.
DN also noticed that part of their web traffic visiting the Investor page is exclusively visiting the financial section only, making up for a very particular and targeted audience.
User Requirement: All the Info at a Glance
“What we’ve seen in user testing with our users is that they have an urge – a constant urge – to keep being updated and informed, so they want as much information as possible as quickly as possible about the things they care about” shares Are Westerink Sandvik, Product Manager at DN.
With short attention spans and no patience to play the waiting game, DN subscribers are immediately served with personalized information when landing on the Investor portal.
As their login credentials are detected right away, subscribers can enjoy customized content at a glance, being served with the latest updates on the tickers, portfolios, asset watch lists, and personal favorites which they care most about.
These personalized elements have significantly impacted the user experience, so DN made sure that individual readers’ market data preferences follow them throughout their navigation on the DN website. “Being able to view the Investor watchlist while navigating to the DN front page has proven to be an important factor, so when readers arrive at our front page, they immediately see the tickers they care most about in a top, black bar. This allows us to meet our user’s demand very quickly,” explains Are.
Driving conversions home
Any website visitor can freely access Investor, create a login and experience some of the personalization features for free, such as creating a watch list, favorites, and portfolios.
However, there is a 15-minute delay on all the financial data. Visitors have to be paid subscribers in order to access the numbers in real-time, as well as all the journalistic content since most of the articles are behind a paywall.
Web traffic analysis indicates that users return daily to three times a week to the site, confirming the “stickiness” and value of the information trove available on the DN Investor page to specific audiences. “We are humbled to know that people are using us as a reliable information source to make decisions with their life savings and their earnings”, reveals Are.
Powered by edge-cutting technology
At the heart of Investor lies Norkon’s powerful Pulse technology. Pulse serves a constant stream of financial data in real-time from market data providers while also enabling newspapers to build their financial section page in a modular way, handling most of the technical aspects and freeing up newspaper developers’ time and resources.
“The new Pulse 2.0, which we launched earlier this year, revolutionizes the way publishers use their financial pages and unlocks a realm of untapped commercial partnership potentials. Our product introduces a whole new level of personalization, tailoring financial news consumption to individual users’ preferences. News publishers can now tap into an ecosystem of personalized advertising and marketing that resonates with their readers on a deeply individual level”, states Tiancheng Chang, Product Owner at Norkon.
New Advertisement Venues
Like most newspapers, commercial partnerships with advertisers make up an essential part of the equation when it comes to revenue strategies. While the newspaper has a solid track of success of physical prints since the early 1800, DN is not immune to the shifting consumer trends in the digital space – a challenge faced by all media businesses.
DN’s Investor space provides the publisher with tools to work with advertisers and partners in new ways by offering sponsored, curated content to DN’s users, such as webinars or podcasts.
“Advertisers are getting a lot of attention by offering content on our platform which is much more relevant to users. When entering the Investor page with finance journalism and numbers, you’re not served with e-commerce advertisement, for example. Instead, you’re seeing a financial podcast or a webinar ad about macroeconomics, so it’s relevant for you, yet it is provided by one of our partners and their experts”, Are shares.
Watch the full DN interview here if you’re curious to hear more from Are:
Analysis: Breaking down DN’s success into actionable items
The long-term success of DN Investor showcases how newspapers can leverage their financial page to generate new paths of revenue and drive home subscriptions.
Let’s recap the elements that lead DN to the path of success:
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- A conversion strategy built on steps: offering free users the possibility to experiment and enjoy different elements, proving the unique, added value of their potential subscription to the newspaper, and finally converting the free users into subscribers for an even greater, personalized user experience.
- A good understanding of target audience and users’ expectations: Thanks to numerous user testing, DN realized that its subscribers valued seeing all the information immediately, at a glance, when entering and navigating the newspaper website. This realization resulted in DN having a page and website that will meet their users’ expectations immediately.
- Enabling personalization: One of the key features is, of course, the personalization possibilities available on Investor. From watch lists to preferred stocks up to creating own portfolios and being able to get the latest updates provides invaluable insights to anyone concerned with investments.
- Relevant commercial partnerships: DN has followed the curated approach and entered into commercial partnerships with paying sponsors to provide enriching content to their users, ultimately educating and providing additional value to their subscriptions.
If you’re curious to learn how Pulse can work for your news website, reach out today to get a demo!
