Studying recent engagement figures for the United Kingdom’s top news sites and apps, I was delighted to see customers we work with in the first, second, and third slots for highest engagement.

Press Gazette reported the Daily Mail and The Times have the most engaged app users of any news brands in the United Kingdom, based on Ipsos data. These revealing numbers are a thundering lesson in finding what makes people stick around: The Mail+ app tops the table with users spending a tectonic 12.6 hours per month in the app, with The Times app readers in the second spot with an equally aeonic nine hours every month. Those using the Daily Mail app spent 6.5 hours.

Head to Press Gazette to view all 50, but the top 10 shows clearly the effect of cracking the nut on product development.

The full top 50 list is split and ranked in multiple interesting ways, starkly showing how much competition there is in the sector for attention. It demonstrates how engagement swings wildly across seemingly the same kind of apps with rates that defy comparable brand circulation or traffic stats.

The list also shows how “old favourites” like puzzles are still fantastic at keeping people onboard: Puzzles is a major feature in the Mail+ app, and the NYT Crossword app weighs in fourth overall for UK user engagement.

So, how do they do it?

The overriding impressions I frequently take from INMA events is how often media success stories get product development right in ways not reliant on tech, but simply aided by it. So, what have we seen, working with brands like those above and lots of others just as impressive in their own space?

Whether they use our tech or not, I feel we get to be unique observers to how success comes about — always of interest to me as a former editorial bloke who looked at how to make readers stick around.

The common factors

What makes these apps successful? It turns out they have a lot in common with each other.

Variety

Beyond delivering news, successful product teams look for ways to wrap an array of other content and experiences around the headlines, including longer more in-depth features, entertainment features, and tools that set about trying to enhance the subscriber experience.

As mentioned, the NYT Crossword app shows even the “news” element can be set aside if the other parts succeed on their own merits.

Added value

We see successful product teams are obsessed over adding value, and they study what the app can regularly deliver. Features like a share price tracker, football gossip, and bulletins are all easy meat for any news organisation — but so can useful things like an audio player with its own unique content style, recipe sections with calorie counters, and ratings and reviews with codes and discounts.

Technology can unblock those things, but they make the cut because they are popular and quickly establish their own value to readers.

Flexible development

One thing I particularly remember from the Mail+ team was its concept of amazing minimum product (AMP) — rather than minimal viable product (MVP) — and the optimism with which it approached the concept of launching something quickly.

MVP almost gives a dog a band name before it gets going; AMP reshaped the way it was setting out to capture the best of what the app would become, but it was also able to respond far quicker to user feedback and test out ideas.

I understand why drawing up a framework and vision of the “finished” product is important, but it can hem you in, if the quest for the ultimate vision means you spend months and millions trying to reinvent the entire wheel and the whole car in a single go. When it launches, then the development starts; that is often the lesson.

Flexible strategy

Many of our customers have print operations too. Does this give them sort of advantage? I’d say not intrinsically, but it does offer a mindset: Every day is a new product.

I’ve always thought that, regarding the misconception of print news not being fast moving (in a digital world), these organisations actually tear up and rebuild the whole product every edition. Which Web site does that?

Where that mindset exists, it’s easy to adapt a product feature in increments. The clever bit about the technology is allowing this to be achievable.

Experiment by default

If the product team is encouraged and able to make small changes easily, it enormously accelerates the likelihood of actually making changes at all. If apps are developed in an environment that places a single rigid vision at its core, the danger is that iterations and changes become so slow to move forward that they arrive only once or twice a year — or never.

What changes would emerge if you employed the 1% better rule? And, moreover, can you actually make 1% of change easily, or is your whole set-up geared around the big bang changes that need the most planning?

Caution can win the day and has its place, but don’t let fear stem countless ideas that might just work! After all, the ultimate common factor that media and publishers really want is happy audiences.

Banner art: Adobe Stock By ivectorstock.

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