USA Today

USA Today is an iconic brand and the patriarch of the Gannett media portfolio. Rethinking its brand and digital presence was a big ask — made even bigger knowing no other news company had attempted such a big change before.

The stakes were high; a risk for a well-known brand. Potential loss in reader/subscriber traffic and drop in advertising revenue. But the media landscape was shrinking, and readers were already flocking to independent news channels for content. That trend wasn’t likely to subside.

Challenges and solutions

First, we identified our client behaviors. Most people read the paper version in the morning, go online during the day to their desktop/laptop and finish the evening on their phones or tablets. The site had to scale for all surface areas.

Second, our design needed to make all content accessible to other Gannett media properties — and vice versa. With 400+ news and broadcast stations across the U.S., national news needed to flow into these local media outlets.

Ad models needed to be rethought. Rather than ad overkill, instead the experience focused on page turns. The thought was that viewing more stories (with ads interspersed) would result in more effective advertising.

The news sections needed to retain the color schemas defined by the brand — an important part of the history of the USAToday paper product.

Our product design team created interfaces for web, mobile, and app experiences, including Windows Surface tablets, partnering with Microsoft to be the first news application on its operating system launch.

The results

Viewers’ approval of the site increased 4x from the original version. Advertising click rates increased 400x in some instances (to the satisfaction of the sales teams), and readers moved through 3x the amount of content they typically consumed in a day.