With one of BBC WS Near East language services, we ran 'project Spirit' for almost three months. The aim was to improve the quality of our users' journey on the website by offering the right content at the right time/space. We had the recirculation rate as the main metric and Chartbeat as the main tool to measure the success for the project.

1. Project Spirit
(An experiment to improve the website
recirculation rate)
Maryam Ghanbarzadeh - Growth Editor
Near East Hub, BBC World Service

2. When measuring the website performance...
As one of BBC World Service Growth Editors I check Unique Browsers to measure websites’ daily
traffic, but at the same time I have an eye on Page Views and Recirculation Rate.
Unique Browsers
Refers to the number of
individual users that have
landed on the website
Page Views
Show how many times
website users have visited a
particular page
Recirculation Rate
Shows the percentage of
users clicking from one page
of the website to another
WILL PURCELL (Chartbeat education team): ‘Recirculation rate indicates the quality of your strategy for
keeping readers moving through your site and ensures that none of your content is a dead end to their
journey.’
Recirculation rate on each page of the website will show how much of users continued browsing the
website to read more of the content offer.
Maryam Ghanbarzadeh - Growth Editor - Near East Hub, BBC World Service

3. On July 2017
one of WS Near East
language services was
up for the challenge
We decided to work on improving the
website recirculation rate
Maryam Ghanbarzadeh - Growth Editor - Near East Hub, BBC World Service

4. We knew
Recirculation rate is
mostly about inline links
We needed to identify why the audience is on a specific
page and give them another reason to stay with us and
read more
Maryam Ghanbarzadeh - Growth Editor - Near East Hub, BBC World Service

5. Initial arrangements
▪ Make sure we have at least 2-3 inline links on
each story page
▪ Inline links will be related to the main story
▪ Inline links will be ‘evergreen’ (not newsy)
‘Chartbeat’ will be our main tool to measure
Maryam Ghanbarzadeh - Growth Editor - Near East Hub, BBC World Service

6. “Sites with links placed
more closely together
perform about 2.5x better
than sites with more pixels
between links
WILL PURCELL/Chartbeat’s education team

7. Final arrangements
▪ We will add at least 3 inline links to each story
▪ Inline links will be ‘evergreen’ (not newsy) stories
▪ At least 2 out of 3 inline links will address the same
audience needs as the main story
▪ Inline links will create one ‘link package’ (all links will sit
together)
▪ The ‘link package’ will be divided from the rest of the
story by using bullet points/dividing lines/etc.
▪ The ‘link package’ will be added to the story when
Chartbeat scroll depth indicator shows 50% of users
are leaving the story page
Maryam Ghanbarzadeh - Growth Editor - Near East Hub, BBC World Service

8. We also assigned a
number as the target
recirculation rate
Maryam Ghanbarzadeh - Growth Editor - Near East Hub, BBC World Service

9. There was a checklist...
Checklist was designed as a
step by step guidance for
journalists to follow the
arrangements aiming to
increase the recirculation rate.
It included action points in 2
sections:
▪ Before publishing
▪ After publishing
Maryam Ghanbarzadeh - Growth Editor - Near East Hub, BBC World Service

10. Communication
We communicated the arrangements with the main digital leads (phase
one) and later with the digital team (phase two)
Maryam Ghanbarzadeh - Growth Editor - Near East Hub, BBC World Service

11. Phase one: Trial
▪ Phase one ran for 9 days (with 2 control days in between)
▪ Three digital leads followed the designed steps to
increase the recirculation rate
▪ Changes were applied to three stories a day
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Control day 1
Control day 2
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Trial Results →
(Daily recirculation rate changes)
Maryam Ghanbarzadeh - Growth Editor - Near East Hub, BBC World Service

12. Phase Two
▪ Phase two ran for 2 months
▪ The digital team followed the designed steps to
increase the recirculation rate
▪ Changes were applied to all new published stories
Phase Two →
(Increase in daily recirculation rate)
Maryam Ghanbarzadeh - Growth Editor - Near East Hub, BBC World Service

13. To know about extra control steps and how to
define the TARGET recirculation rate or any other
questions → email:
maryam.ghanbarzadeh@bbc.co.uk