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In a lot of ways, the New York Times website sets the standard for online content. But even the Times could learn a thing or two about making a story more relevant to we b readers.

The NYT published a story about 12-year-old basketball phenom Jaime Nared on nytimes.com to preview their Play Magazine product. Site producers promoted this story in prime real estate on the website’s home page, and rightfully so. Nared’s story of being banned from playing with girls or boys her own age for being too good is an intriguing read.

But the Times fell short from making the story an intriguing web read.

Here’s how the NYT and YOU could improve the Jaime Nared story to make it more interesting to web readers:

1) Show More Photos: This may sound counterintuitive, but photos help move people through a story. Eye-catchers, and photos lead in this respect, help bring a reader along and scrolling. If all a web reader sees is text, they can quickly get bored. Especially in a story that screams for images, give readers what they want. If you can’t embed them all, create a gallery or a slideshow and link them in the story.

2) Provide Info Boxes: Just like in print, info boxes are some of the most read items within any written content. The quick-hitting facts will grab a reader’s eye and help them move along, too, just like photos. Readers on the web respond to visual cues. By giving a web reader an anchor point, you’ll keep them interested. They’ll be looking for more quick facts they can consume.

3) Break Up the Story with Sub-Heads: How often do you read through a four-jump story that is nearly entirely text? I’d guess it’s not very often. Don’t do the same disservice to your readers. When the topic shifts, add the visual cue to tell readers what the new section is about. Web readers scan stories, they don’t read top to bottom. If you add a reasonable number of anchor points, you might even get the reader to click through each jump.

4) Embed the Video! Check out how easy this is: I searched “Jaime Nared youtube” (without the quotes) and found a number of reports and video on Nared. And guess what, all I have to do is slap in the code like and you’ll see the video that follows:

Pretty simple isn’t it? The NYT and YOU may not have time to create your own video, and that’s ok. Likely, if you’re covering an interesting story, someone has already created the video for you. Readers want the video, why make them leave your site thinking you don’t know how to use YouTube? Find it and embed the video with the story.

NYT Gets A Lot Right, But What Else Can They Do?

Let’s not go overboard with the NYT-smearing. This site is very well-produced and has some incredible content. My example is only meant to show you that we all can improve, including the industry leaders.

They get a lot right with their piece, including writing a great headline (not awesome for search engines, but “Scary, Isn’t She” is an attention grabber for human readers).

What else can the NYT do to improve their story production? What have you done that they could learn from? What have you learned from the NYT?