How The Verge is getting loyal users with its redesign

Mark Stenberg of Adweek writes about how a redesign of tech news site The Verge is helping it convert readers into loyal users.

Stenberg writes, “From January to September, The Verge saw its readership increase 15%, according to Patel. In the same timeframe, its loyal user base, which it defines as a reader who visits the site at least five times per month, increased 62%. (Twitter, now X, has lost 13% of its daily active users since Elon Musk bought the platform in October 2022, per Apptopia).

“‘Our total user base is growing, but specifically, the user base is shifting to loyal readers,’ said Helen Havlak, the publisher of The Verge. ‘So, the site is doing a great job of converting fly-by readers into loyal readers.’

“Despite these increases, in the months following the September 2022 redesign, The Verge saw year-over-year traffic decrease every month except for June 2023, according to Comscore. From September 2021 to August 2022, the publisher averaged 17.3 million visitors per month, per Comscore. From September 2022, when the redesign occurred, to August 2023, the site averaged 11 million monthly visitors.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.