Heiko Scherer is the founder and CEO of tchop. In this article, Heiko discusses how the homepage has changed - it's no longer about one screen. It’s about shared intent that runs through the entire product experience.
Homepage traffic has been drifting downward for more than a decade. In most newsrooms, this is no longer up for debate. The signs are clear: visits have declined, session durations are shrinking and the ways people arrive are more fragmented than ever. What used to be the front door is now, for many users, a side entrance they rarely walk through.
Still, what’s more interesting than the data is how publishers have responded.
Some tried refreshing the homepage with new layouts, hoping a better design might bring users back. Others added personalisation layers, believing algorithms might rebuild the kind of editorial judgement that once guided readers. A few removed the homepage altogether, shifting toward infinite scrolls or card-based structures that resemble social platforms.
