Daily Nation Website
For one of Africa's largest newspapers we established the digital strategy and built a new website optimized for mobile use in situations with poor data connections.
A completely new, mobile-first website for one of the largest newspapers in Africa. Goal: discover new ways to make money online with content. Quite a challenge. Not only because of the ambitions and the necessary cultural differences, but also because the project came about without physical cooperation from the team due to corona. Together with creative agency Morrow, we created a new website as the first step in the rebranding of the ambitious Nation Media Group. To complete the digital transformation, we then implemented step-by-step improvements in content creation, performance and advertising revenue through validated learning.
The start
After we created the Volkskrant app in 2018, we were recommended by De Persgroep to Nation Media Group, publisher of several major African newspapers, and maker of television and radio programs. This Kenyan media group wanted to rebuild its Daily Nation website from scratch. A website that is mainly visited by people under the age of 35. Usually with a mobile and often with a feature phone. So with a small team we traveled to Kenya to create a vision for the new Nation Media ecosystem during a jumpstart, to determine the digital strategy and to test with monetization.
Launch early and often
The jumpstart showed that Daily Nation would like to learn from users at an early stage in order to be able to implement improvements. That is why we decided on a phased go-live, so that we could monitor and immediately optimize user behavior and ad revenue. Moreover, the step-by-step launch allowed us to properly guide the editors through the switch to the new site.
Result
Despite the corona pandemic that prevented us from working with Daily Nation on the spot, we managed to deliver a newspaper website on time that is completely optimized for mobile use: from iPhones to phones of a few tens with a bad data connection, the website always loads in seconds. In addition to this technical delivery, the new website is primarily a start to tailor the content more to the target group and to make people pay for articles by helping the publisher to learn from the available data.
Technically and strategically a challenging project, and of course a special adventure to work for such a large newspaper in Africa!
