The Guardian's evolution of success

In the early '90s, The Guardian was the 8th biggest UK paper, a relatively small local player. By 2015, it had reached the top three in the entire English-speaking world for digital readership. Now it scores number one for the public's trust in digital-content news, with 84% of readers agreeing that they "trust what they see in it."

Growing the customer base The Guardian way

The Guardian's core mission has always been to help people understand the world by keeping journalism global, free, and accessible. The model it settled on was a supporter model that enables readers to donate while keeping content free and open, rather than a typical revenue model.

The Guardian took a countertrend business move by rejecting paywalls while the rest of the market raced toward paid subscription models. About 70% of newspapers across the EU and US operate some kind of online paywall, a trend that has increased since 2017. It was a big bet for The Guardian, and at one point paywalls were considered, but the decision to stick with open access paid off, contributing to a huge readership and the foundation for research and A/B testing-based evolution of content and reader experience.

Research and A/B testing-powered evolution

A/B tests need a large set of test targets to have meaningful impact. With the size and scale of its audience base and the amount of data generated through open access, efficient and quick A/B testing became routine practice for The Guardian, helping it see itself the way readers do and speak to them authentically.

Examples of what The Guardian has tested: non-invasive ads, finding that a message at the end of an article that feels like a native extension of the piece caught readers' attention better; longer, conversational messaging tones outperforming short and snappy ones, contrary to conventional marketing wisdom; a small paid membership scheme with rewards like a branded bag and certificate, which showed that readers just want their money to go to journalism; and reminding readers of value with messages like "You have read 100 articles in the past 12 months," an effective tool for bringing readers back.

Episode 4 sneak peek

• On open access: "We want our journalism to remain global, free, accessible for our readers, and not available only to those who can afford it. We want to give people the opportunity to contribute regardless of how much or how often, where they live, how they get their news."
• On A/B testing: "We found that A/B testing was both a means to improve our conversion rate, but it was also just a tool to learn. Bear in mind at this point, there was not really a template for our model, and there wasn't really a manual on how to do it."
• On no paywalls: "I would say giving people unrestricted access has probably helped us understand what is important to a wider range of readers than a paywall site. It's almost certainly given us access to a wider range of people and helped build our understanding of them."

More about Jesse Wilkins

Jesse Wilkins is at The Guardian, one of the world's leading liberal newspapers. After working in a variety of e-commerce roles, Jesse has spent the last few years in the donation/subscription space. He was part of a small team that launched The Guardian's voluntary donations "Contributions" product in 2016 and played a key part in helping it reach 1 million acts of financial support, pivoting the organisation toward a reader-funded model. He is now the senior growth manager for global reader revenues, leading a team of six.