Active Readers Stay Longer
How freenet.de uses Opinary’s polls to activate readers and boost users’ time on site.
CHALLENGES AND OBJECTIVES
Freenet’s goal is to turn fly-by readers into loyal audiences by increasing interaction with their community. At the same time, they want to optimise newsroom KPIs such as dwell time, bounce rate, and page visits.
Freenet operates a comment section, but participation is rather low and keeps shrinking. Generally, participation in news articles and debates is mostly only available to those willing to comment and post. However, this group has become smaller over time. Only 22% of all users participate actively, while 47% don’t participate in news at all. Thus, Freenet wants to enable users to express their opinion in articles in quick and easy ways.
*Reuters Digital News Report, 2023STRATEGY AND APPROACH
Opinary’s polling technology addresses readers in articles with questions and enables them to express their view along a scale with just one tap.
In a trial period of four months, Opinary polls were distributed hyper-contextually across various articles and sections on freenet.de. Post-trial, Freenet analysed the performance of articles including Opinary polls compared to articles with no polls included. Freenet focussed especially on their core metrics:
a) time on site, and
b) bounce rates.
Try it for yourself!
RESULTS
During the trial period, Freenet consistently grew its number of votes and impressions at a rate of 20% month-over-month
Users spent an average of 12 seconds longer in articles which included polls.
The polls were also able to increase the articles’ attractiveness: users left the analysed articles with Opinary polls significantly less often, so the average bounce rate of freenet.de could be reduced by 7% during the test period.
Opinary polls offer our users the opportunity to express their point of view easily and quickly. They do this willingly and often – the engagement rates are usually in the double-digit percentage range. In this way, we strengthen user-website loyalty and supplement factual editorial content on freenet.de with opinion and emotion.
Manuel Bödiker,
Editorial director,
freenet.de
TALK TO US
It’s time to start asking the right questions
Do you want to reach your readers, and interact with them, while leveraging Opinary’s approach to First Party Data sourcing ? Arrange your free
consultation now.
THE NUMBERS
90% of Germany’s biggest
publishers use Opinary
Our journalistic-driven mission and the impact of simple engagement has made us the biggest provider for on-site engagement in Germany.
