The story of MNT.sk by Dennik N, a free digital product for increased reader engagement and subscriptions

Dennik N is an independent daily newspaper based in Bratislava, Slovakia, with a focus on long-term quality journalism. It was founded by former reporters of the biggest Slovak broadsheet daily after it was acquired by a local oligarch. Now most of its revenue comes from online subscriptions.

Our cooperation with Dennik N started in 2020, when we became an integration partner of their own open-source subscription tool, REMP (Reader’s Engagement and Monetization Platform).
In February 2021 they put their trust in FatChilli with another project, redesigning their digital product MNT.sk, for which they needed a reliable technological partner.

To lock or not to lock the content

Dennik N made the decision to put all their content behind a paywall from the very beginning of the title in 2015. Even though it might sound a risky idea, their confidence in their supporters paid off and in a very short time they had thousands of paying subscribers.
They were also thinking of what to offer the readers who were not yet subscribers, how to make them visit the website and potentially convert them into subscribers.

In addition to the full articles which were locked, they offered a free and unlocked service on their homepage, a list of short news and updates on current events called “Minute after minute”. Here the idea was to create consistent and meaningful short news, which enabled readers to learn everything they needed about the current events in one place, without having to read the full articles behind the paywall.

The editors wanted to do better than just copying agency news or advertising headlines. Instead they provided short but valuable content and got their readers used to coming back to their homepage for updated information.
The ability to choose between minimalist free news and locked full articles eventually led to increased interest for more in-depth information and that increased the number of subscribers.

Soon there were hundreds of short news weekly, so there was a need to archive them on a separate URL and also to categorize them into topics. So Dennik N created a new page, “MNT.sk”.

What is MNT.sk?

MNT.sk now serves as N’s service for quick and short news, distributed to readers through different platforms – Dennik N’s homepage, a stand-alone page MNT.sk, a mobile app, push notifications or newsletters.

The stand-alone page MNT.sk has an important role, it is the web home of the service, but it is not the most important distribution platform in terms of usability. That is the widget on Dennik N’s homepage. In terms of user engagement, most important is the mobile app, which is currently one of the most used news apps among Slovak readers.

Why is MNT.sk a good idea?

MNT.sk was considered to be an entry-level digital product of Dennik N to convert more readers into paying subscribers, as it shows links to the entire articles (which are behind a paywall). MNT.sk is filled not only with N’s exclusive content, but also offers links to the content of other media outlets – both Slovak and International. Back in 2015 when they started this was not common among media outlets and it is still considered a no-go in some countries.

The strategy behind the idea was that once the readers learned to use MNT.sk as their primary source of all news, they would form a habit and be more likely to buy subscriptions and read the whole articles.

Secondly, the role of MNT.sk is to be a platform for the N’s content promotion without any specific marketing efforts. It should motivate readers to install the app, share the news and read the full articles.

MNT.sk is now a very popular service with which tens of thousands of users are engaged for a relatively high daily time. It is confidently one of the best digital products among Slovak media outlets and also serves as an inspiration to other media outlets in thinking about short news in a different way.

Project: The redesign of MNT.sk

Dennik N had been planning the redesign of MNT.sk internally for several months.
The first input for the redesign was the need to integrate a live blog feature, i.e. quick live-streaming blogs from current events (hundreds of short updates related to the same event). As mentioned above, MNT.sk was used on several different platforms, which made this task really complicated.

Moreover, the MNT.sk solution was designed in 2015, the widget on the home page in 2018, and the apps in 2015 – they even had a different design. MNT.sk has changed over the years and the solutions were becoming more difficult to maintain, so with the integration of the new feature it made sense to unify the design across all platforms. Last but not least, based on the constant feedback from users, there was space for improving the user experience, too.

Getting feedback from readers

When designing the above improvements, Dennik N engaged their readers and asked for their opinion. They posted different designs and polls in the private Facebook group for the paper’s subscribers. This way readers felt more engaged because they participated in the redesign, plus they validated the suggested improvements. Moreover, the readers/paying subscribers have always considered Dennik N as “their media outlet”. It mattered to them, so getting the relevant feedback was not a difficult task.

For more tips on digital strategies for media outlets have a look at our presentation: Become a Publisher with Digital DNA.