How La Libre Belgique and La Dernière Heure are increasing reader engagement with NextGen editions

Joining other European publishers in leveraging the NextGen format to increase readers, IPM has upgraded La Libre Belgique and La Dernière Heure’s mobile offering to include NextGen apps for a more interactive reader experience.

A complete digital publishing suite

With this addition, IPM now benefits from Twipe’s complete Digital Publishing Suite. La Dernière Heure and La Libre Belgique’s daily newspapers are available as NextGen and Replica apps on mobile, tablet, and desktop, in addition to the Replica and NextGen WebApps.

The app for tablet also changed its format, going from a landscape layout to a new portrait layout. After one week, the adoption of this new app is already at more than 80% for both ePapers on iOS and Android.

Growing readers with NextGen

In just the first week after launch, we’ve already seen an overall increase in use of the WebApp, with page views up 25.8% for La Libre Belgique and 46.2% for La Dernière Heure, plus a 32% increase in average session duration for La Libre Belgique and 42.3% for La Dernière Heure.

The WebApp, adapted to mobile devices, offers us new prospects for distributing the newspaper by freeing us from the constraints of app stores.

Olivier Goyens, Technical Chief Editor at IPM Group

While it is too soon to tell for IPM how much their readership will grow with the addition of the NextGen mobile reading experience, Het Nieuwsblad’s success may give us a clue. Back in January 2016, Het Nieuwsblad launched a NextGen version of their daily newspaper.

I have to admit that the new app with the improved reading format that doesn’t require any tapping or zooming is addictive.

Pieter De Smet, Digital Manager of Het Nieuwsblad

In just the few weeks after it was launched, this ‘addictive’ new app saw a 50% increase in daily usage. The increased reading comfort of the NextGen ePaper also raised the daily average reading time by 20% to 30%.

ePaper success

At Twipe, we believe edition based publishing should be core to the strategy of every newspaper publisher. Editions fulfil fundamental needs of large groups of audiences, such as the 44% of news consumers identified by Reuters as ‘daily briefers’. These readers like to be briefed once a day, and appreciate the structure, completeness and depth of editions. Our NextGen technology is one of the key enablers to increase reader engagement. The templates have been designed to facilitate reading in a smooth and tactile user experience.

NextGen is one of the key factors for increasing reader engagement, in addition to our checklist of the six steps to growing your ePaper, including metered social sharing, daily push notifications, and more.

This article was written by Mary-Katharine Phillips, Media Innovation Analyst at Twipe from 2017 – 2021.