The move from two separate apps to the The Telegraph Unified app
The Telegraph is a broadsheet newspaper that was founded in London in 1855. For years, The Telegraph had 2 separate apps: a live news app and an edition app. Whilst this addressed the needs of some readers, it was often confusing for others.
For The Telegraph team, edition readers were missing live news curated by The Telegraph editors. Now thanks to the The Telegraph‘s unified app, readers have their news all in one place.
The role of unified apps at The Telegraph
The Telegraph made a bold and innovative move when they brought the Live News experience into their Digital Edition App creating the unified The Telegraph App for all their subscribers. With edition readers being amongst the most loyal and the edition product being seen as their premium product, The Telegraph didn’t want to make too many changes to this experience.
Adding the live news feature to the edition app experience was therefore the natural way for the innovation to go. Subscribers of the previous Live News app have now been migrated to the new Unified App Experience built on the Twipe Apps v4 NextGen Platform.
New user experience
This integration provides readers with a completely new user experience. Readers can access live news stories throughout the day on the app, whilst also having access to the day’s complete newspaper.
This provides readers with the ability to access The Telegraph‘s editorial curation for all their news needs. This integration has already seen more customers going between the edition and live news in the app than they have seen before.
Enhanced scannability for easy navigation
To allow The Telegraph’s readers to easily navigate the 180 articles published on average every day, the team has co-designed the page cards navigation. Through a simple and sleek interface, readers can navigate the entire publication using card previews and sections.
The importance of interactive puzzles
Industry research has confirmed the importance of puzzles and games in increasing engagement levels and habitual behaviour. NextGen technology allows easy integration of interactive puzzles that can be played directly inside the publication, making them a part of the reading experience and a tool to generate loyal subscribers.
How has the unified app been received?
The new unified app is a big part of The Telegraph‘s subscriber first strategy. With an aim of reaching 1 million subscribers by 2023, the development of a new unified app has been crucial. The unified app is a subscriber only product and going forward, it is where The Telegraph hope to onboard the majority of their new subscribers. Whilst the unified app is still in its launch phase, it is going well.
Following on from this, The Telegraph have started to send out “Breaking News” notifications. These have helped to push greater reader engagement. The team will continue to use the notifications in a bid to greater engage subscribers and to stand out from the competition as being a full day product, not just a one-time morning read.
Working with Twipe
Choosing an external partner to develop the new unified app was a significant shift for The Telegraph. Traditionally, they have used an internal mobile development team. Despite this change, the transition has gone smoothly. One of the most important features of the transition for The Telegraph has been the opportunity to work collaboratively with the Twipe team.
