When Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) first launched its mobile app in 2015, it created a contemporary curated news product. But as user behaviours and needs changed, the company knew it was time to reinvent the app experience.

During this week’s Webinar, INMA members heard from Daniel Marx, senior product manager digital products at FAZ, about the app’s redesign and how the company turned a free news product into a premium news experience.  

In German, Der Tag means “the day,” which Marx said was a fitting name for an app designed to deliver the essential stories of the past 24 hours. It was more of a niche product than the company’s other offerings and was immediately successful: “It was valued by our users and was named best news app by Apple in 2015 and 2016,” Marx said.

FAZ continued tweaking the product, integrating its freemium digital model into Der Tag in 2018 to limit some stories to subscribers but keeping others free. That was successful for a time, but Marx said that by 2022, new user acquisition slowed and retention was low.

“We saw that after installing the app, [users] didn’t stick around a very long time, which was also related to a large amount of paid content,” he explained. “We realised if we really wanted the product to succeed in the long run, we’d have to make bigger adjustments.”

A brand new Der Tag

FAZ decided to rebuild Der Tag from the ground up — not just as a news app, but as a premium, intuitive digital experience. In May 2024, it kicked off a full-scale redesign.

“We decided to do this fully user-centred,” Marx said, explaining the team conducted 34 interviews, three user tests, and collected data from about 600 questionnaires to start. Then they prototyped wireframes, tested click dummies, and iterated based on direct user feedback.

“We really questioned everything about the product,” Marx explained. That meant everyting from navigation and design to content presentation and features. Early tests even asked users to choose between vertical or horizontal scrolling: “Almost all of them, like 90%, said they preferred a version where you go through the feed horizontally.”

This was a big advantage for FAZ, he said, because it allowed for quicker usage of the app and the interaction felt more modern and intuitive: “It’s actually more fun to use the app now, from my point of view.”

Building a better feed

It was important for the redesigned app to retain its editorial DNA while simultaneously embracing modern UX principles. The new Der Tag is sleek and elegant, Marx said: “If you see the product portfolio, you will see it’s really distinctive to the other products, but it still respects our brand’s identity.”

Instead of a default bar at the bottom of the screen with icons that show the available features, a discrete side menu can be expanded and provide options for what actions the user wants to take, whether that is sharing the article, commenting, bookmarking, listening to it, or jumping back to the start of the article.  

The most-used function, text-to-speech, was placed front and center to encourage use — and users responded. In the first week after relaunch, usage of the text-to-speech feature jumped by 100%.

The new app also slimmed down the number of stories delivered, dropping from 24 stories to 10.

“The idea was that it is a product for people that don’t have a lot of time, so that’s why we have a limited amount of articles,” Marx said. “If you are in a hurry and you just want to read the important things, 24 articles is still a lot.”

The feed is personalised with content tailored to user preferences, so the 10 articles they do receive will be of interest to them. There’s also a rotating podcast recommendation and a daily news quiz at the end of the feed where users can test the day’s knowledge.

“If you’ve read everything, you can proceed to the quiz to see if you really got everything that you need to know for the moment,” Marx said.  

Another innovation is AI-generated summaries. Each article opens with a brief AI-crafted synopsis, replacing the traditional teaser or intro paragraph. Users can skip it if they prefer the full story, but most have embraced the feature, making it a default across the app.

Changing the business model

Perhaps the most dramatic shift was the change in Der Tag’s business model.

The old freemium approach was replaced with a 30-day free trial followed by a hard paywall. FAZ also dropped the monthly price from €22 to €8, a 60% reduction aimed at making the app more accessible, Marx said.

“We had the feedback before that the app was way too expensive because it’s a limited amount of articles. So our idea was to give the user the possibility to test the product for free, but after 30 days he has to decide if he’s willing to pay for the product.”

The new pricing is the most affordable way for audiences to experience FAZ journalism and is particularly effective in giving younger, digital-native users a low-risk entry point into the brand’s ecosystem.

“Before, there were not a lot of young people using the product, which we assumed was due to the high price. Now we want to reach younger audiences with the product.”

An immediate response

FAZ didn’t have to wait long to discover what users thought of the app. In just the first week following its launch, app store installs jumped by 550% and FAZ hit No. 1 in the App Store’s magazine and newspaper category.

“We had 100% text-to-speech usage increase, plus 18% [more] unique users plus 12% increase in visits.”

Importantly, retention rates significantly improved after the redesign: “This was one of the primary goals, that the users stay with us and they come back in the days after installing the app.”

Key takeways

Marx said the entire team learned a lot during the project, and he shared his top three takeaways from the process:

1. Focus user testing on both new and existing users. Designing for newcomers is essential, but longtime users also bring valuable perspectives.

2. Maintain the pace after the launch. Post-launch evaluation is just as important as pre-launch planning; user data and feedback helped FAZ fine-tune the experience even after release.

3. Be aware of users’ resistance to change. While some users initially missed the old version, the data showed they didn’t leave; in fact, more users joined and stayed.

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