Aftenposten Junior launched more than 10 years ago and immediately became a huge success in the private market. Many teachers were very interested in using this newspaper as part of their lessons, but it was a printed paper and many schools could only afford to buy one paper — even though they had about 28 students.

Teachers started asking for a digital version, and after realising how much big interest there was for it, we built Aftenposten Junior skole. It quickly became popular among both students and teachers.

Watching and learning

To learn how to improve our product, we regularly observe kids using it in different classrooms. One observation was that kids were overwhelmed by the traditional digital news front page, which had several content pieces mixed up without being clearly categorised. This resulted in a lot of scrolling instead of the kids actually reading.

Through conversations with the children, we realised that we have a lot of content they would love to read, but they had trouble finding it on their own in the original product. 

Kids who were interested in the content that, in the original product, had category buttons in the top menu found something to read more easily than kids who were interested in content that did not have such buttons. These findings shaped one of our main strategies for 2022: We want all kids between 9 and 12 years to find content they love.

Implementing improvements

Since we had succeeded in the original product with category buttons for some topics, we decided to make category buttons for all content to give the kids an easier navigation route to content that interests them.

We also changed to a whole new content structure on the front page. We still have curated news on the top, but the rest of the content is organised in sections for each category.

We also allow kids to decide the order of the category sections on the front page through active personalisation, which involves rating seven different categories. Then the content on the front page is organised according to their choices. In short, what they rate with “Love it” comes as the first section, and what they rate as “Boring” comes as the last section.

Kids have very visual minds, and colour can help them learn and remember, which in turn can be a tool to make the navigation of the product even more efficient and clear over time as the kids use the product. Therefore, each category has its own colour theme.

How it changed engagement

After launching the new front page, we saw more students entering an article through category pages. This increase has continued.

We also found that kids had missed content in the product, like football, celebrities, and news, and these categories are now among the most popular ones.

In the graph below, you can see that before the launch of the new student page we received approximately 0.25 section clicks per article click on average. In other words, four articles were viewed from one listing page.

After the launch, we received around 0.85 section clicks per article click — in other words, 1.17 articles viewed from 1 section page.

This could indicate that students can more easily find the content they want to read or listen to.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .