Bergens Tidende makes the most of bad weather with its habit-changing app

By Jan Stian Vold

Bergens Tidende

Bergen, Norway

Connect      

The city of Bergen in Norway is famous for bad weather, so we decided to make it entertaining — and readers love it.

Bergens Tidende’s new weather assistant is a perpetual motion machine. Designed for constant newsworthiness, it updates continuously, offering automated journalism with flair and a personal touch. Add addictive visualisations and habit-forming elements, and you have the essence of it.

The Bergens Tidende weather assistant has several creative special features, such as a fun weather fact, a countdown to sunshine, and more.
The Bergens Tidende weather assistant has several creative special features, such as a fun weather fact, a countdown to sunshine, and more.

It all started with the simplest and most useful question in our business: What do users need? So we sat down with them to find out. We showed sketches and prototypes in search of x-factors that could differentiate us from all the other weather apps.

Two criteria became essential: We had to offer something the users didn’t already have and do it with as much local identity as possible. In short, we had to combine usefulness with originality — not a minimum viable product, as the business term goes, but a maximum loveable one.

Making weather fun again

All this gave birth to three ambitious goals:

  • “Everyone talks about the weather. BT will give you even more to talk about.”
  • “Even bad weather should be entertaining.”
  • “Let’s create a self-driving car.”

One year later, we dare say we have succeeded. Here are a few of the many comments received in our in-house user feedback system:

  • “Best weather report ever!!! ... Now, the weather in Bergen has finally become fun and livable!”
  • “Absolutely fantastic fun! Weather, statistics, pictures, text, fun facts, and information. Perfect for teaching and use.”
  • “Superb visuals. Informative and fun for both adults and children!”

What did we do? Let’s dive into it.

Building a weather app like no other

There are three main pillars:

  1. The Personal Weather Assistant. The readers told us they wanted a personal guide to local weather. We have thus worked a lot on the tone of voice. It is an automated product in most ways, but it should feel tailor-made. We want the rich variety of headlines, leads, and automatic language to be Easter eggs for frequent users. Readers are into it:
  • “Super cozy and engaging weather reporters! 🤗”
  • “Weather reporting with zest and humor. Love it 🤩😁”
  • “Absolutely delightful! Always lifts my spirits!”
  1. Addictive visualisations. Useful and personal is great. Useful and personal-looking smashing is even better. So our UX team and developers put a lot of energy into automatically updated illustrations. We created an animated precipitation diagram, a dripping rain bulb and a sparkling sun-o-meter. In addition, we put on a ticking sun clock as a countdown to when the sun actually shines in the rainy city. We even have a rainbow mode! We’ve also created a system for reusing the best weather pictures from the archive. This has proven to be a treasure chest. The goal is to make the service as dynamic as possible. Robot journalism can be quite mechanical, and we wanted to avoid that. Again, let us turn to the readers:
  • “Looking forward to checking the weather every day.”
  • “Love the design of the Web site.”
  • “Absolutely delightful, read it every day 😍.”
  • “Really fun with history, weather facts, and a bit of statistics.”
  • “I absolutely love, love, love the whole concept and today’s weather fact.”
  • “Absolutely brilliant for those interested in the weather 🥰.”
  1. Let us infotain you! Sometimes the weather is deadly serious, but mostly it’s not. We always want to inform our readers, but this time with a twist, so we continuously cultivate weather myths about Bergen and its people. We chase more or less obscure weather records. We’ve created a sun bank. And a daily updated weather fun fact widget has become a favourite among many users. Initially, it was a bit of a quirky thing for the most avid weather enthusiasts. But user feedback suggests that a lot of readers now appreciate this. The fun fact of the day is handmade, but we’ve created a weather-GPT to search our massive historical dataset for the most enjoyable facts. This is what the readers say:

Readers have responded favourably to the new weather app, as seen on the in-house user feedback system.
Readers have responded favourably to the new weather app, as seen on the in-house user feedback system.

Overwhelming response

When we launched, the long-term goal was 10,000 daily unique users — a significant number for a new service in a regional newspaper in Norway. Six months after launch, the average is almost 16,000. We have already exceeded 4,000,000 pageviews. Many of our readers use the service very frequently, which was an overall ambition: to create new habits.

We are now averaging 4.27 out of 5 possible stars in the feedback system. Almost 16,000 have taken the trouble to rate us. Let’s give one of them the final word:

“This is fantastic! Love that the weather becomes personal! This brings weather discussions around the dinner table to new heights; just have to thank!”

Header photo by Photo by Eirik Brekke/Bergens Tidende.

About Jan Stian Vold

By continuing to browse or by clicking “ACCEPT,” you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance your site experience. To learn more about how we use cookies, please see our privacy policy.
x

I ACCEPT