Editors' Picks - more new functionality for your pleasure
- Summary:
- It's one of those weeks where the hits just keep coming. Fresh goodness for readers.
Earlier this week we rolled out Your Story Library and so far the feedback has been both awesome and useful. Yes, there are a few glitches but the dev team are on the case. Please keep the feedback coming.
They say you should never roll out something new on a Friday but heh - we like to think and act diffreently so today, we have rolled out a new feature called Editors' Picks.
The idea is that Editors' Picks content complements the related stories element that already appears at the end of each story. Editors' Picks reflects the editor's personal knowledge of topics that are either directly or indirectly related to the main story and which therefore might be of interest to readers.
We like to think that our editors are genuinely knowledgable in the stories they cover and while the related stories element is nice to have as AI-driven (yes, it really is) functionality, we also know that readers want a sense of connection with editors. Editors' Picks achieves that objective. Here's how it works.
Editors' Picks allows editors to manually select stories that are related to the main story that in turn populates a floating carousel that appears once a reader has scrolled through about a third of a story. An example of how this appears is at the top of this story. Unlike efforts by others in this area, we avoid the intensely irritating splash pop-ups we regularly see elsewhere. The carousel does not interfere with a reader's ability to consume the main content. Instead, the carousel sits over the sidebar area for as long as it is persistent.
Editors chose as many stories as they like, but in reality we will likely only include three or four and even then, not every story will carry the carousel. The idea is to be choosy and frugal.
Once the carousel appears, readers can spin through the stories, click on and open anything that takes their fancy or simply close the carousel since it remains persistent until a user decides otherwise.
Floating bars and the like have long been a feature of websites but we think this implementation combines the best of intent with the best of user experience.
Do you agree? Do you hate it? As always, please let us know what you think, either in comments or emailing den [at] diginomica [dot] com.
