ETtoday

Research for ETtoday to enhance user engagement

Project scope and Role

Period: 6 months
Responsible work:

Conducted user research project: I am responsible for helping ETtoday with planning and conducting a solid user research project.

Background

ETtoday is the most influential and popular online media in Taiwan (https://www.ettoday.net/). It was ranked number 5 among all top sites in Taiwan according to Alexa. It produces a lot of news every day for readers and it has 18 million fans on its Facebook page.

Business Problem

Social media such as Facebook and search engine Google control network information algorithms and limit the reach of ETtoday news content.

Business Goal

Enhance user engagement rate: to develop social functions on ETtoday APP and rise user engagement without relying too much on Facebook and Google

Research Goal

1. Analyze user behavior and user needs when socializing (hitting the like button, commenting, and sharing) on news media.
2. Detect UX problems on APP and test if the new social features on ETtoday APP are user-friendly.

Research Plan

1. Survey: We first conducted a survey to get a broad understanding of users. The questions were designed to understand user behavior and motivation in terms of socializing on ETtoday and other news apps.
2. Competitor analysis: After releasing the survey, we started to research ETtoday’s competitors to:
   a. Understand how they were performing on apps regarding social function.
   b. Highlight brilliant design which ETtoday could learn from.
   c. Get background information before interviewing users.
3. In-depth interview: Based on the survey, we further selected some users who use ETtoday and other news apps frequently as interviewees. We then conducted interviews with 8 users to clarify the needs, difficulties and values revealed behind the behavior.
4. Heuristic evaluation: Identified usability problems on ETtoday app and gave suggestions according to the result of competitor analysis.
5. Usability test: Designed tasks and recruited users to evaluate the new social feature on ETtoday APP.

Result and Findings

Result:

1. Produced a survey analysis report by using cross-analysis.
2. Created an affinity diagram to categorize the data collected from interviews.
3. Generated 3 personas to present user needs and pain points, preferences from different types of users.
4. Finished competitive analysis by listing what ETtoday could learn from competitors.
5. Created a list of heuristic problems.
6. Scored usability performance.

Findings:

1. Users are more willing to socialize when they want to express their opinion, correct information, and support / go against a topic.
2. The usability of ETtoday is not friendly enough to users that they could not finish the tasks.

Contribution

1. Provided suggestions for ETtoday according to research.
2. These findings will be further applied to the development of social functions on APP to enhance user engagement rate.