What was the challenge?
Independent.ie approached us seeking a technology partner to assist them with two key objectives:
Mobile News App
Design and develop a news app for Independent.ie readers that is fully optimised for mobile reading and delivers a highly engaged audience.
Increase Subscriptions
Drive purchases and sign ups, via the app, to the paid for Independent.ie news subscription service, offering readers paid for access to premium content.
The Solution
A reimagined and redesigned collection of native apps were developed and launched, for use across both iOS and Android mobile and tablet devices.
Developed in Swift & Kotlin respectively, the new apps were designed with user experience at their core. The apps provide readers with access to the latest breaking news, as well as local and international news articles across all sectors, including sport, business, lifestyle and entertainment from both the Irish Independent and the Sunday Independent.
Key features include:
- Breaking news alerts
- Push notifications
- Personalised news
- Bookmarking for later reading
- Text resizing to assist with readability
To drive purchases of news subscriptions, an in app purchase experience was designed and implemented across both apps to enable readers to frictionlessly sign up and subscribe to read additional and premium content directly within the app itself. This purchasing option was deemed essential due to its ease of use, the immediate access it grants and the fact that it remains the most popular method by which people purchase within apps.
To cater for those readers who subscribed outside of the app and to provide a consistent experience across all platforms, a login function was developed within the app itself to allow subscribers to login using their existing web credentials and access their premium content.
The Results
The apps have proved to be a resounding success for Independent.ie.
The apps are delivering the most engaged audience across all Independent.ie digital platforms, with app users visiting more frequently (x5 times more) and reading 50% more articles on every visit, compared to web.
x5 more visits
50% more articles read
The introduction of in-app purchasing has also proven to be the most effective driver for purchases of news subscriptions, with over 42% of all subscriptions originating via in-app purchases, despite the apps accounting for only 9% of overall digital readership. The frictionless method, coupled with the highly engaged behaviour, is a recipe for success it would seem!
To top it all off, the Independent.ie app has been recognised and awarded as ‘News App of the Year’ at the prestigious UK App Awards.
