From the bottom of our hearts, thank you to everyone who responded to our survey yesterday! We got so many great answers, so I thought I would respond to some of them below.
For those of you who missed the article, I published a survey with some questions on how SempreMilan can improve. I was blown away by the number of responses and if you want, you can still submit yours.
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I have read all of them so far and I will continue to read new ones that get submitted. That said, I wanted to provide some answers to the requests and suggestions. We take our work very seriously and with the help of all of you, we can definitely improve.
Top news not visible
“Not sure how to put it, but a longer list of older news, sometimes want to catch up with news from the last 2 days or something and clicking see older news instead of page 1,2,3,4 etc is painful.”
“You need to have a top 5/10 news of the day on the front page entire day. Sometimes major news vanishes and you have to dig deep to see it.”
“I often wish there were a ‘need to know’ mode, something like that. An area of the site where someone who’s time-poor would be able to go and read just the most important news.”
I fully agree with the above. It’s something we have struggled with for quite some time, and it’s certainly something we have discussed in the last year or so. The story spotlight, with the three ‘selected’ articles at the near-top of the homepage, is one of our ways to combat this.
Another thing that comes to mind is that our ‘most popular articles’ section is located in the sidebar, and thus far down on the mobile version. So we could perhaps move that up, or we could add a new category called ‘need to know’ as suggested above or ‘top stories’. There are ways to improve, for sure.
Of course, I would be remiss not to mention our newsletter here as well, even though it’s hosted on Substack and not the website. It’s completely free and has all the top stories from the week that has been, including longer takes on two main topics.
Comments
“User comments within the matchday liveblog”‘
“The discussion forum on the big articles after each match is are key element of this site. Any enhancements you make to the discussion forum would be appreciated honestly.”
“Like, dislike count for article and comments”
“The comment functionality sucks. I think it’s hindering the conversations.”
The comment section has been problematic, to say the least. Not because we don’t enjoy your comments, we do, please comment more! It’s just a hassle to manage given how WordPress works at the moment, as we have to approve many comments ourselves.
Some rightfully get flagged for moderation, others not so much, but the way it functions is just subpar in every way imaginable. It would indeed be nice to add a login feature, a better structure, likes/dislikes, editing function and so on.
I’m keen on making this a priority for the coming months, figuring something out with our developer. That includes adding the comment function within the matchday liveblog which, by the way, has the same style as Football Italia since we’re part of the same network.
I’ll keep you posted on this, I promise.
Fewer unnecessary articles
“Sometimes too much clickbait and unnecessary drama. Makes the website very amateur and less appealing. Other than that I love sempremilan.”
“Less speculation and clickbait during transfer season.”
“A more balanced and objective measured analysis. Too many clickbait articles that sound more like the unhinged takes my mates have at the pub than any journalist.”
This is something we have talked about internally over the years, or really ever since we started. It’s a rather difficult balance as we follow the MilanNews style of reporting, which is essentially to report almost everything (we have a source blacklist, though) and make the source very clear.
I think we do a very good job of always showing the source, first thing in the title, so that you can decide whether to read or not. However, we can always do better on this front, as we sometimes fall into the trap of writing for writing’s sake.
There are many examples of ‘poor sources’ breaking big news over the years, so it’s important to keep an eye on those too, but I do agree that we can be a tad more restrictive. Perhaps dialling down the output a little bit, plus the aforementioned ‘top stories’ feature, will help please all.
Because let’s remember, while some of you said there were too many articles, others said that’s exactly what they enjoy. I’m one of those who would rather keep tabs on more than less, for example, so it all comes down to the less is more/more is more discussion.
Content suggestions
“More information about the financials of the club and new sponsors, or new overseas academy connections.”
“More behind the scenes updates.”
“Olli’s audio bulletins were great, I miss those.”
“Possibly consider shorter podcast releases during the week to comment on things between the weekend matches.”
Let me just start by saying that there were tons of other good content suggestions, and we’re looking into how we can implement these into our weekly routines. However, I picked out the ones above for a very specific reason: we sort of already offer them.
This is going to sound like a shameless plug, but over on our Substack (which 36% of you apparently didn’t even know existed!), we regularly post financial updates and long reads about the business of Milan, including sponsorships etc.
Assuming the above comment regarding behind the scenes was about SempreMilan and not the club, that is something we also provide there. In fact, we have a whole series on our journey from the start until now. Of course, we are also rather open about things in our members-only Discord chat.
Then, we have the bonus podcast episodes each week and the Pub Chat episodes, which provide more content than the free weekly podcast. Not to mention that Lorenzo and Stefano have started doing instant reactions to games over there. In short, check it out!
Finally, I saw some wanting insight on the opponents each week and that’s something we have in the preview! But I’ll look into doing a separate piece for this.
Free/no ads section
“Thanks for all your efforts. I would like to see more podcast material, with better quality sound/video. Free to listen/view not with payment.”
“Less ads on the website!”
“No ads, no payments – it’s difficult but I am sure there are other ways to make money from traffic.”
“Please never go for a paid website. Fans must be treated like God. We love the team with all our hearts. Please don’t exploit fans.”
We have arrived at the most sensitive topic. I’ll be as blunt and honest as possible: providing more content for free, in addition to the website, newsletter and weekly podcast, just isn’t feasible for the time being.
The ad market has plummeted, or at least it’s not what it used to be, and YouTube revenue doesn’t get us anywhere (it’s very low). In an ideal world, all of our content would be free but it’s just not a sustainable business.
I don’t know if this is actually the case, so forgive me if it’s not, but in some conversations I’ve had with readers or people who are familiar with us (but don’t necessarily read our site), they think we are swimming in money. Believe me, it’s not the case.
Sure, we pay ourselves salaries like regular human beings as it’s our jobs, but everything we make gets reinvested into the business for one simple reason: we want to provide the best content possible. The ads are annoying, I agree, but bear with us as we find a balance that works for everyone.
Let me also just make this abundantly clear: the SempreMilan website will always remain free. There will always be an option to read the articles with ads, for example, even if we introduce an ad-free version that you must pay to get access to.
We keep our paid content on Substack (SempreMilan Insider) and that’s it. Maybe we will eventually move our bonus content from Substack to the website, but that still won’t take away from the main website’s current output.
Podcast questions
“Would love for there to be a place on the website to ask questions for the next podcast, since I am not on Twitter.”
Agreed! It’s been tricky with the podcast questions, especially since we have them in different places and that makes it difficult for Oli and the team. However, what I will say is that our Discord server takes precedence, so I would recommend signing up for the Substack to get access to it.
I will look into adding a ‘send in your question’ box somewhere on the site, where you can enter the question and your name.
Honourable mentions
A way to rate the players: I wanted to introduce this for the current season, but I ran into some difficulties finding a solution. I think I have it now (touch wood), at the very least so you can vote for the MOTM, so I will look to implement this in the player ratings articles in the coming weeks.
Video highlights section: This was a great thing that hadn’t even crossed my mind! I’ll bring this up with our developer and see what we can do. It should just be a case of embedding Milan’s YouTube channel, to be honest, but we might have some more fancy solutions too.
Stats section: Like most of your suggestions, I want to add this as well, we just need to figure out the right way to do it. Again, I’ll check with our developer and then I’ll come up with something design-wise.
Liveblog style: I want to give a special thanks to whoever left the long comment about the liveblog! It’s something completely new for us, so I greatly appreciate the feedback. I will definitely try to make the style more personal moving forward, as proper play-by-play commentary will indeed be too difficult.
Final remarks
As said at the top, I really want to thank everyone for taking the time to answer the survey (both for the praise and constructive criticism). It means a great deal to me and the whole SempreMilan team. I was expecting maybe 30 answers, but instead we got 140+! It shows we have something precious.
We don’t have an unlimited budget, so no changes will be possible overnight, but we’ll do our utmost to put a majority of the suggestions into practice asap. It’s back to the drawing board for a while, as they say…
If your feedback didn’t get a response here, give me a shout in the comments and I’ll get back to you asap! For obvious reasons, I just had to pick out the main bits.
So you want to provide the best content as possible but you are constantly copy pasting lies and posting them with 0 additional input? This is your job but it is a problem to actually write something yourself? But AI translate articles are posted instead, sometimes without even being able to remove the additional AI comments? This is not a real job, but a money making tool for you. If it was a real job you’d focus much more on being a reliable Milan news outlet. If you created a website that is 100% automated and collects data from other websites of choice, translates and posts with other wording it would be exactly the same as 99% of what you do. So if you aren’t doing this you are missing out. For this type of copy paste portal you 100% don’t need that many people, just one. Maybe for the podcast but even for that you can get AI avatars today, and one person can do all the actual content.. That 1% left is not working or actually trying hard for your readers. It is how to make more money with more clicks by doing the least possible work. How can you not write in every article that the source is bad and not trusted if you know this? How do you expect a guy from let’s say Nigeria (no offense people from there, just a random country I picked) to know which Italian person or portal is a reliable source? It is a joke to write “I think we do a very good job of always showing the source, first thing in the title, so that you can decide whether to read or not.”. You are doing a horrible job by predicting random people know which source is reliable. I have written about this maybe 50 times? Maybe even a 100. Isn’t that obvious? You don’t need a pool or feedback to find this out, you just read comments and how people react to obvious lies.
The only other part I care about is actual top news or however you want to call it. At least do them by day, make it a list, I saw you write that you are “on newsnow”. Check their website and how it is listed, you can see days of news on a small phone screen. How about you copy their style at least for that? You can find a WordPress plugin for news list or similar in 10 minutes. I have also accused you for posting that sh*t without any of your input as many times. Shouldn’t you try to actually be the best for ALL OF YOUR READERS? Not only people that understand source reliability or pay for the podcast?
I think you’re overestimating what AI can actually do. For a variety of reasons, we cannot use AI-produced content, among them being that Google punishes it.
Like I said, what sources we report and don’t report is a constant process, and it’s not an on/off switch. You’d be surprised how many have told us they want ALL of the news.
So you’re contradicting yourself when you say we should lower output to please all of our readers, because that won’t be the case. In any case, in essence I agree without and again, it’s something we want to improve moving forward.
Let me first respond to you, I had an additional comment about ads. First of all, I own an online business (3 websites) and I’ve used AI for content for years, with a single person doing the “lecturing” after AI. In one day you can create content that one person without AI can do in 15 days. Easy and simple. I am talking from my personal experience so what you wrote is not entirely true. Yes, if you 100% automated the website you wouldn’t rank on Google, however, the website would be 99% like yours, if the website is setup and AI just fills the content in already set templates. Read what I wrote again. Now, I can’t find where am I contradicting myself but I think you miss understood. I didn’t say you need to lower the output, but have your input on all those articles? So not have an AI translated article and post it with “As Milan news reports” as the only input. If you don’t trust the source, maybe write it in the article? “With xy not being the most reliable source bla bla, whatever. ” Or put an Fing score on every source and add it. I mean there is 50 ways to solve this easily, and none of them is you discussing internally which sources are ok and not and then just posting it. If you know then you should tell it to others that don’t know? Isn’t this the whole point of someone being a news reporter and finding out (or knowing) info that the average person doesn’t and sharing it in a way that everyone gets it? You are missing the point man.
The reason I visit this is because I saw it on Newsnow randomly and most of the news are posted here, so I don’t have to visit 17 portals to read them. So I 100% am not suggesting to lower the output of news. Please read what I wrote again.
I also wanted to add a long comment about ads but I’ll shorten it here. I block ads on 99.99% of websites because 99.99% of websites have Google ads, ublock does a great job of adding the know trackers in there and blocking them, + adblocker as another layer. Since I have an online business I was offered black hat google ads about a trillion times, you can find how to do it with cloaking software, links etc in maybe 7 minutes after reading this. 100% scams that you can run easily, nobody at Google checks the ads, 0 human beings involved. Until it is like that, there is 0% chance that I’ll see any ads. If that is not a viable business model for you, change it. Nobody is forcing you to be a free website and/or have ads, but I’m sure if you offered both options (so you can pay and not see ads) a good amount of people would pay for that. It might not beat the amount made off of selling their data but it would be 100% fairer. Also it is IMPORTANT to leave the website free for people that want it to be free. . Would I pay? If the price is reasonable I might support you, not to remove ads. But actual verified Milan News, with a big RED sign over news that aren’t reliable or verified. I’m also sure you could do much more player interviews and similar things. I mean if you want to become THE news portal for Milan in English you need to actually do something, copy pasting other websites is not what gets you there.
Also kid from some country that is a Milan fan maybe can’t pay the money necessary to read this, so having it only under a paywall would be a horrible mistake in my opinion.
100% it is important to leave it free, that was the whole point of my ads argument. As for pay to get ad-free, it could work, but a more likely solution is we put our bonus content (currently hosted on Substack) + ad-free under the same roof for 5 dollars a month.
Player interviews would be great, but the club is very restrictive on that front. Almost only give it to broadcast holders, sadly, but believe me we are working on that.
Regarding the sources, I like the tagging system, i.e. having a label next to each title that gives more info on reliability. That could be something for us to implement.
I understand you perhaps just mainly read the news on here, but I think it’s not really fair to suggest that’s all we do. There are new editorials every week, not to mention podcast and all other bonus content we do. Appreciate the feedback though
You know what works best for you, I am not trying to tell you how to do it but that is my opinion on things. I do run an online business and I understand many different aspects of it, even though I don’t have a news website but I have only paying customers.
Interviews, at least you can do Leao, he is streaming every day 😀
Sources, I know Italian media so I more or less understand but in general that isn’t public knowledge. So do something about this so you people that read your website have a bit of this extra knowledge included, if you offer that you are already doing more than others.
And for the last part, well I am quite unfair in my assessments but that is how I’ve learned to get the best results, don’t take it to hard. 🙂
Bro I’m on your side there is things I hate and there is things I love. But the end of the day I think these guys do “their” best and sometimes someone’s best is not enough. I also hate the video pop-ups and shit makes feel like an very unprofessional site. But to be fair it’s their site they do what they want and I’m sure it’s a balance between user experience and making money as every business is.
You and me are free to make our own site if we feel we can make a better one as it sounds you have experience of Ai website scraping etc. But to fully throw these people under the bus is wrong as it is their business and it would be stupid to assume they make it bad on purpose. And if we are not happy with this site there are many other milan news sites to read from.
I’m grateful there is a site to read from but I would like there to be news from the latest to the oldest like it used to be so if I miss 2 days it’s easy to find the old news I’ve missed. Now it’s too hard to find the old news you have to really look and it takes many clicks. Also when I enter a article there is this annoying video pop up and it makes feel like I’m visiting a malware site. Maybe make a video section on the front page if someone wants to watch the videos, I have never watched them and it’s annoying them popping up while you read and moving around with your thumb. Other from that thanks for your work!
Thank you for that comment Tapani! I’m sure Sure (pun intended!) had good intentions and I value the feedback, but thank you for putting things in a broader perspective.
We are indeed trying to do our best for the love of the club. We will take all of this feedback with us and get to work, in fact I’ve already started working on a new layout so the top stories are made clear and easy to find 🙂
I do read more than one website, Milannews(.)it in Italian and this in English. But if I wrote nonsense that is an issue only for me than they don’t even have to bother, right? If I’m wrong I’m wrong, easy.
Part about opening your own website is a bit funny. That is like telling someone to start their own club if they don’t like what the club they support is doing? I’d suggest to drop sentences like that. No, we shouldn’t start our own anything if we don’t like something. It depends on the situation but in most cases that is not the right thing to do.
Of course they do their best, I didn’t say they are doing bad on purpose but they asked and replied to some feedback and I’ve given my comment on things I think could be improved. Especially the part where they internally discuss sources and for most readers that doesn’t mean a lot, they still push some obviously made up news (by that source) and people don’t know…the ads, they don’t have much choice as google ads is the king. But I still won’t allow them, that is why I explained exactly what the problem is with that for me.
I just wanted to come back to this article to check if I got a reply and it was pretty hard to track it, so that is one of the worst issues here. Just finding an article from today. I just don’t get how is it throwing under the bus, I know I am a bit unfair mostly but my actual feedback is quite valid and on spot.
Hey. I am the one who asked that @Sure gets banned.
I am his twin brother.
I suspect my submission didn’t make it through.
A few weeks back the lineup was published incorrectly 4 or 5 times. It was commented on at the time and it was _never_ fixed.
Numerous spelling and grammar errors (not second language stuff just outright misses) happen some days.
Basic writing tools like Grammarly or a prompt to AI to leave style and fix the spelling and grammar for British English would catch this.
The Lineup debacle would only be caught by an editor.
What is being done about these sorts of quality issues?
It made it through! I personally use Grammarly, but it’s not always correct and sometimes doesn’t work properly for technical reasons. But obviously, mistakes happen because we’re human, no matter how hard we try there will be mistakes.
Perhaps you can add a delete button for comments made although that just means that replies made to that comment become irrelevant. Also if possible you can add a section where we can watch video snippets of the team. Then there’s the ever plaguing issue of “you’re commenting too fast” especially when the player ratings are released and people try to comment on that. Regarding the ads issue, I honestly didn’t know this site ran on ads. I use ad blockers on my browser so I didn’t notice the site had ads. For those who are disgruntled with the ads, an ad blocker can be a nice solution. Lastly, I was going to comment on how the news is arranged… In the past I liked that I could come on here and see the news by the timing and see what comes after what but now, I kinda miss a lot of the news cuz the arrangement is a bit different. Even when I go to the news section, I could scroll down and see a news dated “3 hours ago” which I somehow missed. Besides that, I like sempremilan and think it’s ‘probably’ the best site to get all Milan related news although sometimes football italia reports Milan related news 3 or 4 hours ahead of sempremilan.