The Wall Street Journal:Redesigning for Today’s PlatformsFor 125 years, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has been a venerated newspaper with a focus on business and a well-educated, discerning readership. It consistently ranks as one of the top publications world-wide in terms of number of sub-scribers (currently approximately 2.8 million). Despite its pedigree as one of the most recognizable and respected newspapers in the world, WSJ has also made an effort to stay on the cutting edge in an industry that has seen significant disruption in the past decade. It was a pioneer in developing a payi05 cross Tarr I overlay ROI ri interstitial design —3livevideo v_7. columns weather moppi rig EU4324-E Web —0 news 1,34_.0 Fri r g rg-.5 Fl redsStrespons intuitive Anci roi ifif°graPilics 72> navi g ation wall for its digital content in 1997, which met with skepticism and even ridicule at first, but is now increasingly common among online newspapers. WSJ was also one of the first news organizations with its own app for the i Pad, released in 2010. From 2010 to 2015, however, WSJ began to lag behind other newspapers and web-sites as devices became smaller, more streamlined, and more specialized. Although it was a first mover into the mobile space, other papers like the Financial Times and USA Today made sweeping changes to their websites and mobile offerings during this time period that better suited mobile browsing. WSJ had not redesigned its website since 2008. To make matters worse, in 2015, Google updated its search algorithms to prioritize sites that are optimized for mobile devices, which caused WSJ’s search results to suffer. The company wasn’t alone in that regard, with nearly half of the websites belonging to Fortune 500 companies failing to achieve “mobile-friendliness,” according to Google, including a surprising 29% of retail sites, where mobile search is critical to maintaining revenue growth. However, with many publishing companies already struggling to adjust to the new online world, WSJ decided it had no more time to waste. In 2015, WSJ undertook a complete redesign of its website and mobile apps across multiple platforms. It released new i Pad and Android apps with a variety of new features to improve user experience, and followed those up with the release of apps for the Apple Watch and for the Windows 10 operating system. It also added its first mobile-only product, an app that features a curated digest of 10 stories that is refreshed during the187
