UX for Business

Content-Heavy Products and Services

Content Is the Purpose

Let’s upgrade from ecommerce sites, which often have some content for marketing purposes, to a site where content is the purpose.

Wikipedia is a content-heavy website, and if we were just learning about information architecture and the UX of content in general, it would be an interesting case. However, Wikipedia is also a nonprofit, funded significantly by donations (I have donated for many years, and so should you!), so it’s not the best “business” example.

Journalism, on the other hand, creates deep websites with years or decades of archived articles and high volumes of new content published every day, week, and year. A site like that often relies on banners and sponsored content to pay the bills, and the more content users see, the more ads they see, and the more money the site makes.

Let’s look at how value is created in a business like that.

Revenue Without Conversion

There are two sides to a content-oriented business that makes money through ads: the users who consume the content and the advertisers that pay for it to exist.

For the users, the value is the content. They read articles or watch videos because ...