CBC's product owner of web presentation, Sam Lightowler, provides an overview of the CBC Feed product. Discussing the motivation for the work, objectives set for the product, methods used, and next steps, the audience should leave with a comprehensive understanding of what the feed is and what effect it will have on internal and external audiences.
2. Purpose
To provide an overview of the feed product
Outcome
A common understanding of the feed product
3. Agenda
What was the motivation?
What are our objectives?
What is the approach?
What have we done so far?
What are we doing now?
What’s next?
4. What was the motivation?
Provide a consistent user experience across all CBC short-form content
Faster, more frequent delivery of new product features to the audience based on
their needs
Reduce operational costs
Reduce the number of digital products that require regular maintenance
Leverage new technology so our products are more performant
5. What are our objectives?
1. Evolvable user experience
2. Increase engagement
3. Increase retention
4. Increase reach
5. Increase revenue
6. What is the approach?
Responsive redesign of all CBC websites (apps are not included)
Consistent user experience
Agile/Lean startup
User tests
Iterative development
7.
8. What is the approach?
Working in partnership with content areas and business units
Regular check-ins for collaborative decision making and sharing of work in progress
9.
10. What is the approach?
Separating content from presentation
11. Stories Video Social Media
Manage
Content
Distribute
Deliver
Experience
The Feed
Polopoly
Ocelot
MPX
Content Aggregator
Layer 7
12. What have we done so far?
Collected data
Analyzed audience behaviour
Conducted tests
Released beta sites for Arts and News using Polopoly presentation
Gathered feedback to inform the Feed product
Built an internal demo site for the feed (http://feed.cbc.ca/)
15. What are the most important things we’ve
learned?
Feedback forms
Beta is clean, modern and readable
Text size may be too big, especially for non-breaking headlines
Some users find the beta site easy to navigate
Some say it’s difficult to find News sections
Requires a lot of scrolling
Validation Board
Density of the page
Number of images displayed at the top of the page
Ordering of links to drive engagement
16. Quick results from randomized test
Approximately 7,800 users were sent to each site.
Users entered either beta or current state from the Canada landing page
Survey ran for approximately 1.5 hours over the ET lunch hour
U Texas capped the survey at 485 users in each site.
Beta
Current
Beta (survey)
Current (survey)
17. What are we doing now?
Ocelot development
Gradual release to the public
Content API development
Demo site
Navigation
Testing
Infrastructure setup for new development, QA and production environments
18. What’s next?
Release plan/timing
End of July hidden production release
Post-Olympics gradual rollout to all content areas that are using Polopoly
Deprecation of old web products when the audience shows us they are engaged with the new product
Demonstrate how the feed can support other objectives:
Cross-promotion
Launching new verticals
Ad products (Native, viewability, video)
Notes de l'éditeur
Intro the team and the room.
The feed is a concept we are using to describe the layout of content on the page
Feed was originally one of the four pillars of the digital strategy. When we started it was just a product. Over time it has evolved to encompass strategies for data, revenue, content, community, distribution, etc. The feed product we are working on is now just one small part of that.
Consistent from a brand and product perspective. Right now we have many disparate digital products. Historically there are about 4 years between redesigns because we have so many things we are trying to maintain at once. When we want to update a feature, like share tools, we have to update each desktop site and mobile site separately.
Engagement - 3 pages per visit
Retention - come back 3 times per week
Reach - 18 million Canadians
Agile software development is a set of principles for software development in which requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams.
The Lean Startup provides a scientific approach to creating and managing startups and get a desired product to customers' hands faster.
Agile software development is a set of principles for software development in which requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams.
The Lean Startup provides a scientific approach to creating and managing startups and get a desired product to customers' hands faster.
Example of collaboration
Agile software development is a set of principles for software development in which requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams.
The Lean Startup provides a scientific approach to creating and managing startups and get a desired product to customers' hands faster.
Traffic patterns, referral behaviour, path flows, use of navigation through guerilla testing, A/B testing.
Aggregate of audience feedback.
Our focus so far has been on Homepage, Arts, News, Sports and Radio. Everything else will likely come later. We need to do more testing and research to see what the best audience experience would be.