Use cases / News publishers
Know which articles actually work.
A one-tap, anonymous feedback card inside the article, answered by the person who just read it. Results per article and per theme, so an editorial meeting can argue from what readers said instead of from the traffic chart.
The editorial blind spot
A traffic number is a headline result, not an article result
Most of what a newsroom measures is decided before the reader gets past the first paragraph. Clicks reward the headline and the promotion. Dwell time is ambiguous by nature: a reader stuck on a badly-structured explainer and a reader absorbed in a good one generate a similar-looking number.
Meanwhile the questions editors actually argue about are the ones no dashboard answers. Was this too long? Did we assume too much background? Is this section drifting away from its audience? Those get settled by instinct and seniority, because nobody in the room has the reader's answer to hand.
What you learn
Two answers an editor can use on Monday
A survey asks at most two questions, which is the length a reader will finish without leaving the page.
Whether the piece was useful at all
A single tap, yes or no, from readers who got far enough to see the card. Read across a section, this separates the pieces that are working from the ones that are only being opened.
What they wanted to say in their own words
An optional free-text comment, and the part an editor will actually read. "Too long" and "too shallow" are different problems with different fixes, and a reader who takes the time to type will usually tell you which one you have.
Per article, per theme
One article is an anecdote. A section is a pattern.
The dashboard groups results by theme as well as by article, so Economy and Politics can be read side by side. One explainer landing badly is a bad day. A desk whose useful-rate sits below every other desk for a month is a commissioning problem, and the comments underneath it usually say which one.
Counts stay counts until there's enough volume for a percentage to mean something. Eleven out of twelve readers marking an explainer unhelpful is worth acting on this week; reporting it as "92% negative" would be inventing precision the sample doesn't have.
Setup
An editor can install this without filing a ticket
- • One snippet per article, or a site-wide default survey that new articles pick up automatically.
- • Works on any CMS that accepts an iframe - no plugin to get approved, no script access, no release window to wait for.
- • Draft mode by default on new articles, so the pages you're still configuring stay out of the results.
- • Multi-language, so a title publishing in more than one language asks each reader in theirs.
Common questions
Reader feedback for publishers, answered
How is this different from the engagement metrics we already have?
Pageviews, dwell time and scroll depth measure behaviour, and behaviour only hints at whether a piece did its job. A reader who leaves after ninety seconds might have been satisfied or lost. The widget asks them, so the answer is declared rather than inferred - and it arrives attached to the specific article, not to a session.
Can we compare sections, not just individual articles?
Yes. Results group by theme as well as by article, so you can look at Economy against Politics, or explainers against news reports, and see where the pattern differs. That comparison is usually more actionable than any single article's score.
Will readers actually answer?
The first question is a single tap - was this article useful, yes or no - with no login, no email and no account. That's a much lower ask than a form or a rating pop-up, and readers who want to say more can go on to the optional comment. A survey is capped at two questions, so nobody is being led into a form. TrueSignal reports counts rather than percentages until the volume supports a percentage, so a modest response rate still gives you something honest to read.
Do we need our developers to install it?
No. It is an iframe snippet you paste into an article, or a site-wide default survey that new articles pick up on their own. Any CMS that lets an editor embed an iframe can run it.
What about GDPR and reader consent?
The widget collects no names, email addresses, IP addresses or device fingerprints, and it is hosted in the EU. There is no reader profile behind a response, which is what keeps it out of most of the consent and retention machinery that a tracking-based feedback tool drags in. Confirm the specifics against your own privacy notice as you would with any embed.
How long does it take to get running?
As long as it takes an editor to create the survey and paste a snippet into a template. There is no integration to schedule and no data to migrate - the first responses can arrive the same day, and the per-theme picture fills in as volume builds across a section.
Get post-purchase insights in your inbox
Get post-purchase insights like this delivered to your inbox.
TrueSignal
Let your readers settle the argument.
Create a TrueSignal account, paste the snippet into your article template, and start the week with what readers said rather than what the traffic implied.
See TrueSignal