At Tiroler Tageszeitung, we had a problem: our news app was outdated — in fact, it was little more than a mobile Web site wrapped in an app’s clothing.

Unsurprisingly, our customers didn’t like it (and neither did we).

It lacked focus, suffered from poor performance, and failed to deliver the user experience our subscribers deserved. We knew we needed a radical change. It was time to go back to the drawing board and build something not just new, but fundamentally better.

A user-first philosophy

Before writing a single line of code, we established our core principles. Our goal wasn’t to create a “super-app” bloated with every feature imaginable. Instead, we committed to focusing on the essentials: a lightweight user experience, a clean design, and rock-solid performance.

Crucially, we decided this had to be an in-house project. We understood that the first version of an app is never perfect. To continuously learn, iterate, and improve, we needed full control over the development process. This strategic choice also extended to our technology. We opted for a modern tech stack built on Flutter, allowing for fast, cross-platform development while ensuring seamless integration with our existing infrastructure. This approach helped us deliver the solid performance we were aiming for.

Ultimately, all these decisions were driven by a single philosophy: putting the most important question at the forefront of our minds: What do our users actually want?

Our mission was to listen, learn, and test relentlessly to find the answer.

Collaborative, data-driven execution

With a clear vision, we established the User Experience Team: a cross-departmental working group, bringing together key people from the newsroom, product, subscriptions, sales, and marketing departments. This ensured that all perspectives were heard and integrated from the very beginning.

Our first step was to dive deep into the data. We gathered every piece of information we could find about the old app’s usage. Then, we went directly to the source: our users. We surveyed them to discover which features were truly important. The answer was surprisingly simple: they wanted a handful of high-impact features, not a laundry list of options.

The most requested functionalities were:

• The ability to gift an article to someone without a subscription.
• Better organisation for videos and podcasts.
• Personalisation options like adjustable font sizes and a dark mode.
• Personalised content feeds.

Armed with these insights, we ran a series of design thinking workshops to develop concrete solutions. These ideas were then subjected to an extensive testing phase with people who were not involved in the initial conception. We created a simple feedback form and were thrilled to receive a high response rate, giving us invaluable, honest feedback to refine the product before launch.

A subscriber-only strategy

We opted for a soft launch, allowing the old and new apps to coexist for a transitional period. But we added a significant twist: the new app was available exclusively for our subscribers. This was a strategic decision to add tangible value to our subscriptions. To make the transition as smooth as possible, all existing app users who were not yet subscribers received a special offer to join.

The results since our launch have been outstanding and have validated our strategy. We’ve seen over 30,000 net downloads, and the app quickly shot to the top of the news category in the Austrian App Store Charts.

Most importantly, our subscribers are engaging more deeply than ever before. Our active user base has grown to over 15,000. Compared to the old app, this represents a 64% increase in users, a 26% rise in visits per user, and a 30% growth in media time per user.

Lessons learned and what’s next

This journey has taught us several valuable lessons:

• Involving all departments from the start is essential for success.
• You can’t fix a poor app by adding more features; you have to get the basics right.
• You have to earn your place on a subscriber’s phone; they won’t install the app just because it exists.

But we’re not stopping here and are committed to continuous improvement. Having already introduced local content based on user-selected districts, our next app updates will focus on content personalisation — both active (based on user onboarding choices) and passive (based on reading behaviour).

Additionally, we are exploring a more holistic way to unlock premium content for non-subscribers, which will enable the highly-requested “gift an article” feature and also create new opportunities for re-engagement of former subscribers and sales initiatives. Furthermore, successful design elements from the app will be incorporated into our mobile Web site, ensuring a consistent and high-quality user experience across all our digital platforms.

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