Magazine Apps a comparative between PDF replica and interactive editions

Apple’s News­stand for iOS5 was launched in the UK on Octo­ber 2011, and a num­ber of main­stream con­sumer mag­a­zine pub­lish­ers have released dig­i­tal edi­tions of their mag­a­zines into this mobile mar­ket­place, part of Apple’s App Store.

Future has been a pio­neer in this early migra­tion period – of the top 100 highest-grossing News­stand titles in the UK, there are over 20 Future mag­a­zine apps at the time of writ­ing. Sig­nif­i­cantly, Future has seen an impres­sive 8.2 mil­lion down­loads of free pre­view issues glob­ally since News­stand launched, under­lin­ing the idea that mobile devices are the key growth area for publishers.

Future’s UK no.1 mag­a­zine app for tech­nol­ogy fans, T3: iPad Edi­tion, cre­ated using the inno­v­a­tive Wood­wing plat­form; Tap! for iPad, devel­oped with Future’s in-house Folio soft­ware and the beau­ti­ful Gui­tarist Deluxe, along­side Good Food, GQ, National Geo­graphic and Empire have all per­formed well since launch.

These are all fully-interactive, paid-for mag­a­zines that deliver rich enter­tain­ment, with uncom­pli­cated user-navigation, and con­tent designed bespoke for the iPad, that trans­late into an engag­ing touch-screen expe­ri­ence. More impor­tantly, they are all priced com­pet­i­tively against the print and replica PDF edi­tions, and all offer dig­i­tal sub­scrip­tion pack­ages via iTunes.

So, why have only a few pub­lish­ers gone fully inter­ac­tive so far? The soft­ware, train­ing and addi­tional resources required to cre­ate a tablet edi­tion, in dual ori­en­ta­tion, with rich media con­tent, can make dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing a con­sid­er­able investment.

But the App charts don’t lie – just by look­ing at Apple’s highest-grossing over­all app chart, the only mag­a­zine apps reg­u­larly appear­ing in the top 50 iPad apps (there­fore shift­ing decent down­load num­bers) are filled with rich media fea­tures and greatly expand on the con­tent offered by the print editions.

Inno­v­a­tive, well-tested and fully-interactive mag­a­zines should fare bet­ter on News­stand than replica ver­sions but we know that many iOS users are down­load­ing these replica edi­tions. Total Film, Men’s Health, Cos­mopoli­tan, Glam­our and many other PDF edi­tions all reg­u­larly appear in the News­stand charts.

Page-turners per­form well in many cases because they can also be viewed on the iPhone. Many users pre­fer the easy nav­i­ga­tion, zoom-able pages and leg­i­bil­ity. And flat edi­tions pro­vide the clos­est mag­a­zine expe­ri­ence as they are gen­er­ally cre­ated with PDFs con­verted from the print pro­duc­tion­process – this also allows pub­lish­ers to fur­ther mon­e­tise con­tent already cre­ated, and avoid the cre­ation costs of a fully-interactive edition.

How­ever, if your users are keen for a richer encounter, the deluxe inter­ac­tive model will achieve stronger con­sumer trac­tion (the in-app pur­chase con­ver­sion rates are higher than the replica edi­tions) but only if the edi­to­r­ial con­tent isn’t com­pro­mised. Read­ers want to see every­thing they see in the print edi­tion and more, and look­ing like the print edi­tion. Main­tain­ing edi­to­r­ial val­ues is key to con­vert­ing your read­ers to digital.

With the right devel­op­ment teams inte­grated into edi­to­r­ial, as well as com­pet­i­tive pric­ing, mar­ket­ing and sub­scrip­tion strate­gies – and the flex­i­bil­ity to adapt to chang­ing times – the lion’s share of fully-interactive edi­tions will suc­ceed in this super-fast-growing market.

Replica edi­tions will con­tinue to deliver rev­enues on this plat­form (and can also upscale if required). And don’t for­get that sales of print mag­a­zines remain the num­ber one rev­enue source for the major­ity of mag­a­zine pub­lish­ers. How­ever, when there’s a long-term cost-saving – and you fac­tor in that read­ers are get­ting bet­ter value for their money with a deluxe edi­tion on their devices – could it be that the future of dig­i­tal mag­a­zines just has to be fully interactive?

1. The con­tent: Stick to the magazine’s edi­to­r­ial tem­plate. Cre­ate extra con­tent for each edi­tion. Imag­ine your print edi­tion lit­er­ally ‘com­ing alive’.

2. Read­abil­ity: Ensure text is leg­i­ble, and easy to fol­low from col­umn to col­umn and
screen to screen. Per­haps use scal­able text.

3. Devel­op­ment: Try, and learn. Con­sider an HTML hybrid App instead of the cur­rent Adobe and Wood­wing solu­tions. Test and test again! Updates are for fixes and cus­tom enhance­ments. React to user feed­back and pro­vide cus­tomer service.

4. User nav­i­ga­tion: Cre­ate instinc­tively intu­itive icons. Ensure a con­sis­tent level of affor­dance in the nav­i­ga­tion tools – from ‘next page’ arrows, to ‘close’ but­tons. Con­sider the user jour­ney through every page turn.

5. Design: Inte­grate the font set from the print edi­tion, with­out sac­ri­fic­ing leg­i­bil­ity. Adapt grids and type styles to read bet­ter on screen. Con­sis­tency and sim­plic­ity wins. Bring lay­outs to life with ani­ma­tions, and use video where possible.