Being Ikea & beating the kitchen memo effect

In search of leads: a dive into the data

We began the project by close examining the usage of our mobile site and app. While editorial teams have long started their days with data reports on their content and conducted in-depth analyses of topics and approaches, we had limited insight into how design choices impacted the performance of our journalism.

Many of these design choices were originally driven by desktop design, which became the foundation of the mobile user experience. Analyzing reader insights and app usage uncovered key revelations.

We had overlooked these insights in previous years, and where we had suspicions, we chose to ignore them.

The 6 most striking results:

1. Mobile, mobile, mobile…
No less than 87% of our online traffic came from mobile (m-site and app), and this percentage continues to grow every month.

2. The home page is not the main entrance
In 67% of stories read, traffic bypassed the homepage, with visitors landing directly on the story. Google, other articles and, to a lesser degree, Facebook were the primary traffic sources. The story detail page was intended as the primary entry point to our brand, yet online editors focused most of their efforts on designing and managing the homepage and section pages.

Consequently, the rich content and unique story mix that define our brand remained largely unseen by most of our audience.

3. The main entrance also turned out to be the main exit
The data revealed that the article detail page was not only the primary entry point for most of our audience but also the main exit point. Of those who landed on an article, only 1 in 10 continued to another article. The others read, watched or listened and then apparently clicked away.

‘Of 10 people who landed on an article, 9 clicked away after reading’

The click-through rate per article was just 1.1. So, through the main entrance —the article — most visitors left just as quickly. A challenging recirculation issue that we, blinded by rising traffic, growing digital subscriptions, and an increasing attention span, had barely noticed.

4. No one makes it to the end of the article detail page
The data uncovered another stark fact about the article: very few readers reached the end of the article detail page on mobile. Around 90% of visitors had already exited the page at a scroll depth of approximately 80-85%.

This suggested they had often reached the last sentence of the story, but anything displayed below it failed to capture their interest. On mobile, tags, response options, newsletter subscription blocks, and ads physically pushed the circulation blocks out of view.

In fact, like nearly every other news site, we continued displaying all the elements below the article on mobile just as they had appeared on desktops for decades. These elements were simply stacked, one on top of the other. As a result, the true value of our product— more journalism — was effectively hidden. Why would a visitor scroll past an ad just to check if more news was available when they had already read the main story?

Given this, it’s no surprise that the click-through rate to the next article was disappointingly low.

5. Kitchen memo effect on home- and section pages
Back to the homepage. While the story detail page is the gateway to our news brand for most people, the homepage remains an important route to our stories, especially for subscribers who use the app heavily.

Our homepage looked similar to many news sites: a top story, a few semi-top stories, but mostly a long list of articles with minimal hierarchy. Regardless of importance, every story had the same presentation. This continuous waterfall of news was occasionally interrupted by sections, columns, and ’the story of the day’ in fixed positions.

However, to our surprise, data showed these fixed positions performed significantly worse than dynamic news positions. On heat maps, we saw the audience literally navigating around these fixed positions.

We dubbed this the ‘kitchen memo effect.’ What had worked well for ages on paper — fixed anchor points and a structured rhythm — proved far less effective on mobile and desktop.

The audience had apparently become blind to the content of these fixed elements. Editors in our newsroom actively avoided having their story selected as ‘Story of the Day,’ which should have been a warning sign. “Nobody will read me then…”

‘Story of the Day? Nobody will read me then…’

The data backed this up. Also with others brands in the company. A/B testing confirmed that moving a moderately performing column to a ‘regular news spot’ within the news feed after a few hours produced striking results. In one case, relocating a column that editors loved—but few readers clicked on—turned it into the most-read story of the week.

It was clear: we needed to abandon the digital fridge notes.

6. Never block the view of what comes next
A final lesson we learned from the data was that minimizing interruptions is crucial. On the homepage, overview pages, and article detail pages, mobile heatmaps revealed numerous clear exit points for readers. Particularly, full-screen listings, large marketing blocks, and the previously mentioned ad position below articles significantly increased the likelihood of users clicking away.

Once again, the legacy desktop design, forced onto a mobile screen, proved problematic. While desktop layouts comfortably accommodate ‘vertical’ lists alongside articles, on a mobile screen, these same lists obscure content below.

The most striking examples appeared on the homepage, where intrusive lists interrupted the natural scrolling flow. For instance, columns or sports sections. If a user had no interest in sports, this abrupt break became a stopping point. What wasn’t obvious was that the news continued below, off-screen.

Addressing this issue became one of the key priorities in the new design.