Markmedia: Newspaper webdesign: the good, the bad, the ugly. Which makes money?

Over on The Journalism Iconoclast Pat Thornton has gone through a number of the postings on Angryjournalist.com. He has a look at post 241 which says

I’m angry because my company, just like the rest of the industry, wants me to do more with less. They’ve said, “To hell with quality. Let’s just fill the website with as much shit as possible.”

Pat then comments:

If you put too much content on your news site — specifically your homepage — you will overwhelm users and they will leave your site. Usability is paramount for any good Web site, and most newspaper Web sites are completely unusable because they are overflowing with content, ads and advertorial junk.

Fair enough, this is the prevailing school of thought.

Have a look at your sites. They probably follow the pretty standard UK model.
Most of your content will be in the top 480 pixels of a screen using a wide screen size and small text sizes.
No (or very little) scrolling. Clean. White spaces. Little boxes. What might be called Scandinavian design.

But hold on a minute.

At a recent meeting of the Digital Editors' Network I
had some things to say on the subject of web design (Press Gazette article). On the good (according to

what criteria?). the bad (again - criteria?) and the ugly (ugly ducklings may not grow up to be swans, but they sure can lay a shit-load more eggs).

Have a look at this:

This is the Swedish news webs flagship. It earns a ton of
money.
It has lots of gaudy adverts. Rotating, jumping, flashing ads.
It is long. You have to scroll a lot. As you scroll a Flash ad follows you like some predatory stalker.

And every page is a front page. The entire content of the "front door" page is present at the end of every story. No matter where you enter the story/site you get the full monty. This design is important because it builds on a deep understanding of traffic flows and acknowledges that readers no longer come through the front door. In increasing numbers they are arriving at your sites from links from search engines (though not every one likes this) or RSS feeds directly to an individual story page, or Tweets, or whatever, rather than navigating from the home page.

And they are making money. Lots of money.

Aftonbladet is a Schibsted title. Schipsted has successfully transitioned from a paper-based media company to digital-based media house. It has over 3.5 million unique users making it the second largest site in Sweden and the largest on-line newspaper by far.

So, every single design rule that you have ever been taught has been broken here, but they are making the sort of money you just dream of.

Am I saying they are right and you are wrong?
Not necessarily.

What I am saying is that they might be right and you might be wrong.
What I am saying is that, as in newsrooms, the "this is the way we have always done it and it worked so far" attitude just does not cut it any more.

What I am saying is that most UK news sites have very strong page formation. But not making money – the Schibsted titles are. Why are they making money on sites that look like a dog puked them up and you’re not on sites that look like a Scandinavian designer designed them?

To quote the Press Gazette quoting me (I love to go all Meta on your asses):

Received wisdom has to be reconsidered, Comerford said. “Who received this wisdom, and is it wise? If there are other sites that violate everything that you would consider the rules of good design, and yet they work, then what can you learn from that?”