MailOnline – a success story of UX design-driven innovation

Following its redesign, the Daily Mail’s website becomes *the world’s* most popular online newspaper website! Pipping the New York Times to the post.

A success story that was awarded the DBA Design Effectiveness Grand Prix this month. I have included below some of the impressive results recorded to date (source: WARC):

– Unique browsers increased more than fivefold, from 18.7m to 91.6m a month (May 2012, ABCe)
– Average dwell time up from 3 minutes to over 6 minutes in 2011 (ABCe)
– Monthly revenue grown by 180% from October 2009 to March 2012 (MailOnline accounts)

The site is a fine example of “design-driven online innovation” as it leverages Web 2.0 features and maximises user engagement. I particularly like its 5.16m deep (!) homepage and other original disruptive features such as its heavy use of images and long clickable story headlines on its homepage (very ‘newspaper-unlike’). Have a browse and see for yourself.

Given its effectiveness, all newspapers out there in the process of transitioning to a digital-focused business model would do well to follow this site user-centered design approach. It will most likely help turn their companies’ fortunes around as they tap into a new kind of readership: young, connected and highly mobile.