Lou's Commentary

January 2011

Getting Your Digital Edition Right

Monday, January 10th, 2011

Getting Your Digital Edition Right

Bob Atkinson, Senior Technology Consultant

If you're a magazine or newspaper publisher, we'll assume you already have a web site to accompany your print edition(s) and perhaps part of that site requires a free or paid subscription. And, if you're like 90% of publications worldwide, you're not making nearly as much money on your web site as you'd like.  Not to mention tightening ad sales across the board.

And now you've had a year of pundits telling you that mobile will be the salvation of the business.

Sound familiar?

Over the past year, every newspaper and magazine client I've talked with is trying to negotiate the maze of getting a digital / mobile edition (DME) of their product to market. And, over that time, lots of digital editions have appeared – and lots of mistakes have been made in the rush to market.

A DME is a good way to build your readership and your brand and actually make some money along the way – if you get it right. That means understanding where the real business model is – not just the 24/7 hype machine. And it means negotiating the interlocking technologies needed to make it all work.

Getting it right (and getting it done cost-effectively) involves answering a structured series of questions along the way …

Pick your targets

What mobile devices will your DME appear on? The marketplace for mobile editions breaks down into smartphones (mobile phones capable of accessing the web and downloading add-on apps) and the much newer mobile tablet devices getting all the press lately.  At this point, the smartphones, running under a dozen different software operating systems, outnumber the mobile tablets 25 to 1. And, despite hot sales numbers in the tablet segment (still utterly dominated by Apple's iPad), this ratio will not change much for the next couple of years.  So, by the numbers, your key target is the smartphone. But if you just go by the numbers you're making one of those mistakes I mentioned above.

The difference is the quality of the user experience. Reading a story on a smartphone screen – smaller than a playing card, regardless of its pixel resolution – is not a great way to view magazine or newspaper content, even with pinch-zoom capabilities. Although more expensive, a mobile tablet with a 7" to 10" screen is a much better experience. That's one reason why tablet sales (about 16 million in 2010, 95% of which were iPads) is projected to jump to about 70 million in 2011, primarily split between Apple's iPad and perhaps a half-dozen leading tablets running Google's Android 3 OS. (The other seventy or so Android tablets appearing in 2011 will stand little chance – Blackberry's PlayBook, however, running RIM's new QNX software, will be a strong third contender.)

The biggest single factor in how the tablet market share war between Apple, Android's licensed manufacturers and Blackberry will unfold is the quality of software developers each draws and maintains.

At this point, the smart money is to support both device types – smartphones and tablets – but customize your product to support the best features of each platform. And, the truth is, that means two different DME products, delivered on the fly. But it can be done a lot easier than you'd think.

What's your content strategy?

While mobile devices offer different form-factor advantages than either print or a desktop/laptop web site, you'll find it will take more than that to build significant mobile sales. A big part of it is platform-specific content. The best publication websites offer unique and more-frequently updated content than print editions, and mobile versions need to go that extra mile as well, over and above both the print and web editions.

And, as with your main web site, you'll need to decide if there's a pay wall for your mobile edition, and just where in the content that wall is.

What's your mobile business model?

Building your brand and readership is nice, but can you actually make money on the mobile edition? With ads? With issue or subscription sales? Selling on your web site or in an app store? Black magic?

The short answer is yes you can make money, using a careful combination of a 'freemium' price model, in-app upgrades and mobile network ads.

The trick is the balance between these – and some cost-effective product marketing.

What's Your Technology Mix?

Typically, a publication DME is a specialized web site or a custom reader application that's driven by live content and ad streams in the background. (Many of these apps can save these streams onto your device when the app is opened, allowing you to read the content later, even without a net connection.) You can develop your app entirely in-house (almost never a good idea), with a third-party app developer (a flexible but often expensive approach) or by licensing an existing publication app shell platform.

Here the decision breaks down into three questions. First, how well does the app you're planning to build or license take advantage of the different strengths of both smartphones and tablets?

Second, how well does it connect with your current print and web site production workflows? Remember, you'll be generating all of the mobile content every day from now on, so the fewer steps needed to re-purpose your content for mobile the better.

Third, how well does your proposed mobile solution connect with both the ad networks and any web analytics services you already use?  Both will be important.

Finally, what does it all cost to get running and to keep running? And how long will it take to get your product out there?

As with most things, it'll quite often cost more than you were initially told, including the hidden costs of staff training and app store commissions. And, of course, it will take a little longer than you'd like, especially when you allow enough time for proper testing and quality control.

Here's the bottom line – yes, you CAN do it, and even make money and build your brand & readership with your DME.  The trick is not jumping into the frenzy without asking some careful questions to your own team and to potential mobile partners at the very beginning.

This is an area we've focused on with clients for some time. If you think we can help, feel free to contact us anytime and we'll help you navigate that maze.

tags: digital, digital publishing, future, innovate, interactive, mobile, readers, revenue, social media