Publisher Website Relaunch Case Study: The Daily Upside
The Daily Upside is a fast-growing media startup covering business and investing.
Challenges
The Daily Upside wanted to launch a new website, but their in-house team struggled to manage the process. Their editorial setup also created extra work for writers. They had to publish the same story in their CMS, then publish it again in their emailing platform.
As we reviewed the stack and analytics, we found another issue, a major bot attack that was disrupting onboarding and polluting subscriber data. For a publisher, that kind of noise can hurt reporting, growth decisions, and conversion tracking. This is a common problem we see in web development for publishers when traffic spikes but protections do not keep up.
“[Refact] played a big part in making sure everything was tailored to our needs … they ensured our marketing was unaffected by the relaunch. After the launch, we saw a boost in terms of the overall conversion rate.”
Patrick Trousdale, The Daily Upside
Solutions
We stepped in with a two-part plan. First, we used a partial-service approach to control cost. We worked alongside their design team to ship clear UI and UX that supported subscription conversion. We also made sure the new platform could handle growth without becoming fragile or slow.
Second, we built a simple way to automate publishing workflows across platforms. That removed duplicate posting and gave the writers time back. We also tightened onboarding defenses to reduce bot signups and protect the data the team relies on.
“… the whole technical team were at hand… If we needed to go direct to someone, it felt like they were always there…
Patrick Trousdale, The Daily Upside
Our Ongoing Partnership
The result was a new site launch that stayed within budget, reduced editorial friction, and cut down bot-driven noise. The Daily Upside kept marketing performance steady through the relaunch and saw conversion lift after launch.
If you are planning a website relaunch and need to protect conversions while fixing the underlying workflow, we can help. Talk with Refact about your timeline, constraints, and what “done” needs to look like.
Publishing at volume and hitting the limits of your platform? Let’s talk. Free 30-minute call, no pitch.
Masoud Tahsiri works in growth and QA at Refact, focused on SEO, organic growth, and product quality. He helps the studio’s products get discovered, perform better in search, and stay reliable through testing, review, and continuous improvement. His work connects content strategy, technical SEO, automation, analytics, and quality assurance, giving him a broad view of how digital products grow after launch. At Refact, Masoud focuses on improving both visibility and reliability, making sure products are not only built well but also findable, measurable, and ready for users.
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