With tablet use exploding publishers are now being forced to take the plunge and cross over to the app market. However, as leading business and consumer publisher Haymarket has discovered with its leading automotive title it’s easier now than ever before to make that shift. Andy Berg, Commercial Director – Publishing at Group FMG explains…
With tablet usage looking likely to hit a tipping point in the near future, it has never been more important for publishers to be able to offer users a tailored and quality experience on the platform, but this in itself brings its own problems.
However, simply replicating a magazine on the tablet doesn’t count for a proper ‘print to digital’ strategy. Not least because the iPad is smaller than the format of most magazines and users find themselves zooming in and out to read the pages. Ultimately, this becomes a cumbersome and unrewarding experience.
On the other hand, completely redesigning a magazine as a bespoke iPad app can be hugely expensive, almost prohibitively so. This lack of choice has been extremely restrictive for publishers particularly if they have to do this on a weekly or monthly basis. But it is clearly something that they need to address, and relatively fast.
The Guardian, for example, has just released stats that show 35% of its site visits now come from mobile and tablet platforms – up from 10% less than two years ago. Of these, 94% are on the iPad, but the publisher expects this to change “pretty quickly” in the months ahead, thanks to the release of new, high-profile Android and Windows 8 tablets.
Having worked closely with a number of leading publishers for many years, porting magazines over to this new format is an issue we have been coming up against with increasing regularity. One client, What Car? magazine has been looking to embrace the growth of tablets for some time and is currently replicating a version of its magazine using a basic “page turner” for its iPad app. The publisher has been forced down this route due to not being able to justify the cost of creating a bespoke app on a monthly basis.
However, working closely with Haymarket we have been able to create a third alternative, which rather than replicating the magazine’s content, enables the title to repurpose what it already has and optimise it for use on the platform – both in terms of physical fit and in terms of the integration of interactivity. This creates a much more engaging experience for the end user, and the result is a product that has 80% of the interactivity of a bespoke app, but is created with 20% of the effort.
By taking the final InDesign pages from What Car? we have created a series of templates that are designed specifically for tablets. All templating and design work is done in the UK working closely with the publication’s design team. And with the printed magazine being fairly template driven already it’s a relatively straight-forward process to flow the content into the new tablet-friendly designs.
“This process has been a terrific solution for us. We now have a more sophisticated, interactive digital magazine than the page turner that it replaces. And it’s considerably most cost-effective than other methods that we investigated,” explains Chas Hallet, What Car?’s editor in chief.
He continues: “To give an example of the type of interactivity we are now able to add to our tablet version, we currently run group tests where we’ll test and compare three different cars. On the printed pages these would be split into different columns and boxes to keep all the different details and specs together. On the app, we are able to present pictures of cars on the page, and by tapping on each one you can see all the details for that vehicle displayed on the screen. This makes it really easy to flick between the different models and compare them.”
“Creating this app has also been painless for our production staff. As we have had only minimal changes to our work-flow and schedules. What’s more it’s also giving us the potential for increased revenues streams and we’re looking at how we can work with our advertisers to take their existing magazine ads and add some interactivity to them so they work in a much more engaging way on the iPad.”
Hallet concludes: “Best of all, we now have a great looking and valuable addition to the What Car? portfolio that’s rapidly winning great reviews from new and current readers.”
Although some titles may be able to warrant the cost of producing a bespoke app, the reality is that the vast majority of magazines can’t invest the necessary levels of cash upfront. This means the magazine publishers are crying out for a solution that enables them to ease themselves into the app market and decide whether they can afford to create a bespoke app. However, for those looking to effectively handle this shift, at the moment it’s not about replication or redesign, it’s about repurposing.
Andy Berg, Commercial Director – Publishing at Group FMG
Originally Posted:
What’s New in Publishing, 2 February 2013
In Publishing, 15 February 2013
Features Exec, 15 February 2013
Cross Media Magazine, February 2013