The Guardian’s Caspar Llewellyn Smith writes on the Guardian website: We are pleased to announce the launch of our international homepage, designed for our readers outside the UK, US and Australia.
In April this year we began a beta trial of an international edition of our homepage. Since the relaunch of our website earlier this year, our global traffic has grown by almost 20%, with more than two-thirds of our audience coming from outside the UK. While we already serve readers in the US and Australia with their own editions, we hope the international homepage will helptheguardian.com become a destination for readers living elsewhere, giving them the option to see a more global selection of stories when they visit the site.
We began the beta trial before the UK general election in May because we knew our UK homepage would be dominated by election stories, not all of which would be of interest to an international audience. Over this period, 50% of traffic from outside our core markets visiting theguardian.com was directed to a separately edited international homepage. The beta test allowed us to gauge the appetite for a more international presentation of news; after all, 40 million unique users based outside the UK, Australia and the US visit theguardian.com each month.
Running the beta test was important. It allowed us to look at the stats, collect feedback from our readers and determine how we should staff a fully edited international homepage. After collating and reviewing this data and feedback, we are now in a position to show the homepage to all our international visitors.
From Thursday 8 October onwards, readers based outside our core markets who have never tried the international homepage will automatically be directed there. Whether or not the reader will see the international homepage will be based on the user’s IP address. So, if you’re in the US you’ll automatically get the US edition, if you’re in Australia you’ll get the Australia edition and if you’re in the UK you’ll get the UK edition. If you’re anywhere else in the world you’ll be directed to the international edition.
We do, however, understand that the international homepage may not be what all our readers are looking for. We know that some specifically visit theguardian.com for a UK perspective on the news. Any readers who tried the international edition during the beta phase and opted out will continue to be directed to the UK edition. Readers will also be able to select their edition of choice from the edition switcher in the top righthand side of the desktop or the “...” button on mobile.
These preferences will be stored so users will be directed to the homepage they have selected whenever they visit the site. Readers in the UK, US and Australia can select the international edition, too, if that is what they prefer.
During the beta trial we listened to feedback from readers about many things, including the frequency of updates on the homepage. Now it has launched fully, the international homepage will be edited across our London, New York and Sydney offices and will be updated as soon as news breaks, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The homepage will display Guardian content which we believe has international interest. When readers visit the homepage, they will be able to find the most important news stories of the moment along with other uniquely Guardian content from around the world, such as long reads, analysis, opinion and sports coverage, be that text articles, video, audio or photography. When UK stories have international appeal, they will of course be featured on the page, too. We want to keep it simple – the navigation bar for the international edition is similar to that on the UK homepage, so regular visitors should still be able to easily find their favourite sections.
One of the many benefits of having an international homepage is that our range of content on international stories, such as the upcoming elections in Canada, will not have to compete with big UK stories that are only of interest to a domestic audience. This certainly doesn’t mean that international stories will disappear from our UK homepage. We remain committed to serving our UK audience with globally significant stories and, as in the past, will often lead our UK edition with international news.
Launching the international homepage is just a beginning. We will continue to explore the best experience for our readers, listening to your feedback and looking at how we can meet your needs in the best way possible. In future, this might involve elements of personalisation or more localised news, alerts and email services, depending on the things we learn about what our readers really want.
As we mentioned in our blogpost about the beta test, we are sceptical that there even is such a thing as a global news agenda. However, the international edition will ensure that readers all over the world will have an attractive alternative to the UK homepage.
