We deemphasized the blogs to test some changes. Part of the reason we didn’t think it a big deal was that the Mac and iPhone blog tabs get a very small percentage of traffic. Less than 1% of our traffic.
So, the solution to getting more traffic for the Mac and iPhone sections is to make them
less discoverable? Funny, I would have thought the solution would be to highlight them in some way, make them stand out.
Also, the desktop front page is presently the only place the blogs are separated out.
On mobile, the blogs and desktop are one feed. Rss too. Twitter/fb too.
Which is precisely why I have both my iPhone and iPad switched to the desktop format. Safari was designed to work with full-sized websites (rather than the "kids table" websites prior non-smartphone browsers required) by having a well-publicized feature where tapping on a column of text zooms in on that column. This works great, and using the desktop site on all my devices means I'm seeing the same content, in the same context, everywhere - as mentioned above, I read down each section until I run into articles I've already seen. This wouldn't work if I was reading the combined feed on my iPhone/iPad (some sites like Reddit increasingly shove mobile readers towards a dumbed-down interface that they misguidedly think is better for mobile - which is why when I read Reddit on my iPhone, it's through the Apollo App - screw Reddit's attempts to make things less complicated and less capable for mobile users, I just go to an excellent 3rd-party app).
We are anticipating that we will be consolidating the desktop front page into a single stream on desktop as well.
Well, having just one stream everywhere, would help. I'd miss the old separation, and I suspect you'd end up missing having a way to separate articles out by level of importance. As it is, you have a way to separate out material that doesn't quite fit the front page, but you're making it increasingly hard to find those sections - it's like you start with the idea that they're less travelled, and now you're hiding them more, so they get even less traffic, so down the line you can justify dropping them altogether.
We could do some things to help in meanwhile. I could make the front page drop down a hover rather than a click.
Please DON'T do this. It would completely screw over those using the desktop format on touch screen devices.
Or perhaps a Mac and iPhone blog link from the sidebar. Open to suggestions. I don’t know about moving everything back to before just yet.
Personally, I think something more like this would be more discoverable:
News: [ Front Page <-> Mac <-> iOS ]
Resources: How Tos | Reviews | Buyer's Guide | Forums
Roundups: AirPods 2 | iOS 13 | iPhone XR | iPhone XS | iPod touch | ...
As it is, you're showing Roundups twice (as a dropdown and then as an entire row by itself. If you made Front Page / Mac / iOS styled more like radio buttons (not as literal little round buttons, but styled so it was clear that you were in one of three available sections, with the current one highlighted and it being very clear that clicking either of the others would switch to that "third" of the site's available news)... something like this would make it more obvious that visitors were starting out looking at only one section and there were other sections available. I'd wager that most visitors want to read the news each day, and once in a while want to visit the resources (when considering a new device, etc.)... the new arrangement hides two of the three sections of news from visitors looking for news. The current arrangement, at a glance, suggests that "Front Page" *is* the only news, and everything else is resources of one sort or another. If you want to kill off the Mac/iPhone sections, this is the way to do that.
I'm thinking you'll eventually want a way to have non-front-page stories. You have that now, although the Mac page doesn't get as much content (because, sadly, it doesn't get a ton of new info, and anything really exciting is "stolen" by the front page). Maybe eventually a front page and a page two, but maybe stylized as "Page One / Page Two", so they sound more co-equal. And again, some sort of radio-button-like indication that "here are all the sections available - all visible, none hidden - and you're currently on
this one."
Ultimately, the solution might be some sort of tagging system, with articles carefully/thoughtfully tagged for what they directly apply to [ iOS (the OS itself), iPhone (hardware), iPad (hardware), Apple (the company), macOS, Mac (hardware), watchOS, Apple Watch, tvOS, AppleTV (hardware), AppleTV (content), WWDC, ...(many more) ] - so, not every story would be tagged "Apple", only those that addressed Apple as a company as one of their main topics (e.g. "Apple stock price hits new high", "Apple proposes new legislation", etc.) and then instead of having separate sections and having to decide which
one section an article goes in, you would have one pool, and perhaps have some common preset filters as buttons at the top of the page - so if one wanted the latest on WWDC, they could pick that tag from a dropdown and get every article (in reverse chronological order) that actually
addressed (not merely mentioned) WWDC (thus, this would require some wise editorial decisions on how to properly tag each article - and, of course, each story might have multiple tags - the fall announcements would have many articles tagged "Apple fall event", but each with additional tags for the the bit they covered, "Apple announces watchOS 6" would be tagged "Apple Fall event" and "watchOS").
Maybe present some of the more topical tags as separate entities at the top of the page (so, WWDC might be presented as a visible "button" in the month leading up to WWDC and during the event). This could be done by editorial decision, and/or separate buttons could be surfaced for the tags heavily selected by readers (or newly attached to articles) the most in the past weeks. This way, WWDC might appear as a top tag at various milestones preceding the event (date announced, tickets going on sale, then the excitement over rumored announcements in the weeks before the event). Such a system would have to make it clear, visually, that the handful of tags currently appearing as separate clickable buttons
right now were merely the current most popular of the many dozens of tags available behind
this dropdown button over here (call it "Topics", maybe).