In our latest webinar Stuart Smith, Digital Mobile Specialist and Ben Edwards, SVP of Business Development explored various app strategies and discussed how to future-proof your digital app solution. During the hour-long webinar, we identified a number of opportunities whilst looking at a number of leading industry examples.
Here are five key takeaways from the webinar:

Mobile first growth

The rise of mobile is shaping the form of content audiences expect and the way they interact with this content. As devices continue to evolve and the popularity of consuming news on mobile rises, publishers must focus more on their mobile strategy.
These enhancements include bigger screen sizes, improved processing power, quicker downloads and larger storage capabilities. These improvements are allowing publishers to create more feature-rich applications and deliver news to their readers much faster than before. This, therefore, provides a better mobile experience providing more digital revenue opportunities.
According to the Pew Research Centre 2017 report, 45% of U.S. adults often get news on a mobile device. That is up from 36% in 2016 and 21% in 2013. Compared to desktop nearly two-thirds (65%) prefer mobile for their primary source of news.

App usage up vs web browsers

Research shows users are spending much more time in apps than browsing on mobile optimised websites.
This is supported by a recent App Annie report that established a number of significant findings, firstly that apps have higher average engagement times vs web views and they also receive a higher volume of repeat traffic too. The pie charts below show the breakdown in comparison for Android devices of mobile browser use vs apps which clearly shows the large opportunity within apps.

If you are considering an app strategy and would like to find out the benefits of an app we posted a recent blog post giving you three reasons how an app can help your digital strategy. Read here.

2 in 1 App – Importance of ePaper vs. Live News

Create an app strategy that gives the publisher the ability to cater to different demographics that in turn widens your target market and provides your existing readers with the experience they expect.
Within the webinar we identified five strategic questions that can be used to discover what functionality you need to help deliver the results and app strategy you desire:
What are your audience reading preferences? – Do they prefer the finish ability of an entire edition or constant live updates or both?
Who is your target demographic? – Younger audiences are found to prefer live news vs older demographics who prefer full editions or combine both to cover both demographics.
How to add value to print? – Generally adding more functionality increases engagement, what functionality and enhancements do your readers expect?
What drives spending? – Advertising vs subscription strategies, propensity to pay for an edition – perception of feeds = web = free
Which devices or operating systems are key? – Design and optimise to the most used device.

One Big App & Spin-off app opportunities

Identify the appeal of having one big app that combines all of your content while exploring opportunities for popular niche spin off projects.
Before choosing a specific app strategy look at the following elements: Audience, Products, Scale, Stakeholders and Speed requirements. Then decide if there is a feasible opportunity for a niche separate app.
According to a recent App Annie report, smartphone users are spending more time in apps than in past years and now access 30 various apps on a monthly basis. Of those apps, users only launch an average of nine apps per day and use them as a daily habit.
Your app should aim to be one of those nine apps that readers use habitually every day. In order to achieve this provide added value to your app and make it as useful as possible for readers, encouraging increased in-app engagement. For example, combining puzzles with news, latest weather forecasts, traffic cameras etc, encourages users to return to keep returning to the app.

Constantly review and improve your digital solution

With even more features and functionality being available as mobile device capabilities improve, publishers must keep ahead of the ever-changing requirements of their readers.
Future-proof your digital strategy by choosing a digital app provider that is constantly innovating and adding new functionality to the app product. This gives you the ability to grow and evolve as the market does, allowing you to move your revenue strategies to be more aligned with engagement metrics through advertising and subscriptions.
To see live examples of different app strategies in action, with live examples watch the full recording of the webinar here.
Sources:
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Digital%20News%20Report%202017%20web_0.pdf
http://www.oneaudience.com/mobile-news/
https://www.appannie.com/en/insights/market-data/new-app-usage-report-how-many-apps-do-users-install-a-month/
https://www.appannie.com/en/insights/mobile-strategy/mobile-web-app-advantage-report/