Why I hate The Guardian's "wall of text" widget

I really hate The Guardian’s appeals for reader support.

The Guardian raised a record amount of funding from readers this last year so they’ve been recently hailed for their monetization strategy.

But I think it’s got a lot of flaws that will break down for them and for you.

I heard two different newsrooms considering doing something similar, so today’s issue is about 4 pitfalls overlooked in The Guardian’s success story.

Before you add a “wall of text,” read this.

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4 pitfalls of The Guardian’s in-article reader appeals

I’m specifically taking issue with what I named the “wall of text.” The Guardian calls it an “epic,” a hilarious name for something decidedly not epic.

It looks like this:

There’s more below that image but my tiny laptop won’t reveal it all in one screen. Could I have pasted it together for you? Of course! But I didn’t because it’s a bad design.

Pitfall 1: Generic appeals for money

Slapping this very broad letter at the bottom of every article is just about the most generic promotion you could do for a news outlet.

It has no intelligence about when it shows (timing), where it shows (scroll behavior), who I am (reader personalization) or what the article is (right message). It just follows you around the site making your eyes glaze over.

✅ What to try instead: Use a tool like RightMessage to get savvier with timing, message and placement. We at least know the readers interest based on the article topic. We can personalize the message like:

Reading about culture → culture appeal
Reading about elections → election appeal

Even if you don’t want to buy another tool, write a set of 4-6 reader appeals based on categories in your coverage and just load them directly into your articles.

Pitfall 2: “We” not “You”

This letter centers on The Guardian, not the reader.

You know how voters don’t care about macro economic conditions, they care about the price of eggs? Readers are the same way.

You’ll always have a portion of readers who want to “support independent news” but you don’t need to convince those people. You’ve got ‘em. The rest of the crowd, they’re going to need some motivation, some perks, some sense of belonging. A reason to buy in.

✅ What to try instead: Write for your reader’s mindset and appeal to what might motivate them. Inform this with your reader surveys or with better tracking and tooling that helps you understand their behavior better.

Don’t want to do all that? Jot down 3 reasons people would subscribe to your publication and switch up your reader appeals to cycle through them.

Pitfall 3: Writing editorial copy not conversion copy

Marketing copy aims to be quick and to the point because that’s what most of us marketers find works best to reduce friction and get those clicks.

The “wall of text” uses multiple 8+ character words and it reads like an essay. It likely slows down the reader. You want that in your editorial content. You do not want that in your conversion content.

But Lex, it worked for them! Yes, it did. I wonder if it worked despite of this not because of it.

✅ What to try instead: Develop a separate marketing copy styleguide. It’s ideal for your publication’s voice to shine through but you’ve got to structure this copy differently. Grab attention and move them into action. Check out Copyhackers for more resources on this style of writing.

Pitfall 4: Bestowing credit to the wrong thing

This “wall of text” appeal is getting a lot of credit seemingly because the team wasn’t doing email marketing until TWO YEARS AGO.

As I talk to publications and indie journalists, I’m noticing this too. There’s really very little marketing of reader subscriptions going on. (Sidenote: this is what brings me the most hope about the reader-funded model because just look how much is being made barely trying. We can only go up from here!)

The Guardian went from no marketing to some marketing in the last few years. Doing something is always going to perform better than doing nothing, even if that something is as mediocre as the “wall of text.”

✅ What to try instead: Treat more of these marketing ideas like experiments. Shipping to get it out there is fine as long as you test and iterate to make it better over time. In The Guardian’s case, this feels to me like one of the first things that worked, not the best thing that worked.

Our takeaway

I’m not taking issue with The Guardian’s results. I believe that it’s working for them. I just think it’s a lame approach and it feels lazy to me to stop here. I’d hate for more outlets to steal this strategy and for this to become common practice on news sites.

It’s bad reader experience and I think we can do a lot better even if you’re just writing a solo newsletter like I am.

What do you think? Are you inspired to try The Guardian’s “wall of text” or do you hate it as much as I do?