Content Apps Are a Bad Investment for Publishers

Someone recommends building an app at every media company I’ve worked at. The intentions are always good. If we had an app, it would be easier for users to access our content, we wouldn’t depend on any platform, and we’d be able to capture all sorts of data about the readers.

On the surface, those are all good ideas. But only ease of use even considers the user, and, honestly, I don’t know if it’s the best user experience. Publishers would better serve their audience with an exceptional mobile experience than pushing users to an app.

There are a few reasons for that.

First, an app requires additional maintenance for the publisher. If you want to serve both Android and iPhone audiences, you need two different apps. And while they may be similar, they are technically written in different languages. Therefore, you go from needing to support one property—mobile web—to three.

Second, the app is a brand play. Getting a user to download an app is one thing; getting them to remember that they downloaded it and helping to build a habit where they open the app? That’s something entirely different. In 2019, Nieman Lab wrote a piece about a study from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. In it, Nieman summarized:

On those 20 young people’s phones, Instagram was the primary app: Every one of the 20 had it and spent the most time on it daily. News apps, by comparison, received much less usage. Apple News is pre-installed on iPhones, which helps account for its relative prominence here — but “no news app (with the exception of Reddit) was within the top 25 apps used by respondents…For two of the four individuals who had the BBC news app on their phone during the two-week tracking period; the app represented less than 1 percent of usage time for both.

No one cared about the apps. We are asking users to introduce a new product into their daily routine. This, by the way, is why email is such an important channel for publishers. Unlike social media platforms, which can throttle your messaging, email is as close to independent as possible. Therefore, you can communicate with your readers without them needing to remember you or modify their daily routine.

Naturally, some might suggest that push notifications can help overcome this burden. And isn’t a push notification better than an email that could get buried? Yes. Except, publishers abuse them—a lot. The hunger for more traffic suddenly leads publishers to spam the heck out of their readers. How is that in their best interest?

Third, apps don’t support how lots of users find content, which is often through email (like I described above) or, more likely, search and social. And this can be one of the most frustrating experiences for users, especially if they are paying subscribers.

I use Twitter as my primary social media app. When I click a news story, I am taken to a Twitter version of that media site. I am not logged in, so I can’t see the content. But I also can’t easily open the publisher app from here. So, I open the story in Safari. This time, the publication forgets that I am logged in, so I still can’t read the story. Sometimes the story page recognizes that I have the app downloaded and prompts me to “Open in App.” After multiple clicks, I get to the story I wanted to read.

Now, I recognize that much of this is the fault of Twitter. They insist on opening the page “within app” rather than opening it in a browser. But as we saw above, even when I open in browser, the publication still doesn’t have me logged in. It requires additional clicks to get where I want to go.

How is this a better user experience?

So, you’ve got to support multiple products, consistently remind the user that the app exists, and ignore many ways users find content.

Of course, some media companies can get away with it. I open The New York Times app a few times a week (though I read more through other sources). But for the vast majority of publications, this isn’t the correct use of resources. As I said above, you’d be better suited making an exceptional mobile experience that keeps registered users logged in.

If you’re going to force people to use an app and want your readers to remember to open it, your app needs to have utility beyond just content. I’ll give a few examples.

Earlier this week, FreightWaves announced it was relaunching its mobile app. At first, I thought it would be another content app. Then I read this part:

According to FreightWaves Executive Publisher Kevin Hill, some of the most compelling things about the app are new chat features that enable users to message each other directly and start group chats based on industry sectors, like rail, trucking and airfreight, and FreightWaves Community newsletters, including Point of Sale, Check Call, Loaded and Rolling, Transmission, and The Stockout.

That’s compelling. Here’s another example: Digital Wildecatters has an app that connects professionals in the energy industry. Jacob Corley of Digital Wildcatters wrote in the AMO Slack channel:

Over the years, we’ve tried Slack groups, etc – none of those seems to really stick for us. We finally went to the community and asked them what they wanted. What they wanted was to connect with their peers in the community 24/7. Our app, Collide, was born. It was an MVP to test the thesis and we onboarded users steadily with zero promotion. Now that we’ve proven this is the way – we’re investing in version 2.0.

In both cases, content is not the only reason people use the app. Instead, the apps have utility beyond content. They connect users. Let’s think about the most fantastic example of this: Bloomberg.

I saw many entrepreneurs launch competitive products to Bloomberg in my years working in crypto. “We’ll have better data” or “we’ll have better news.” But what they all failed to understand is why Bloomberg won. Yes, it had news faster than everyone else. And yes, it had unbelievable data. But more than that, it was the perfect social network of Wall Street. With a few clicks, you can send a message to any other Bloomberg user at any company. Messaging was the secret weapon for Bloomberg. Because you couldn’t talk to people without a terminal, you had to pay for it if you wanted to succeed on Wall Street.

It may be audacious to say this because Bloomberg is genuinely at another level, but FreightWaves and Digital Wildcatters could have similar marketing. If you want to remain connected with those in trucking (FreightWaves) or those in energy (Digital Wildcatters), you need to be opening the app more often.

Does this mean you need to invest in an app that connects people?

No, of course not. Many media companies don’t have the resources to create this technology. It can be a significant investment, and supporting it can distract from other initiatives. Additionally, you need to spend a lot of time getting people hooked on the app, distracting from other projects.

But I truly believe that the only way a media company can benefit from an app is if there is utility in the user having the app. Getting the content is not sufficient enough. This is why we see plenty of media companies launch their apps, but after the first few months, they stop promoting them. Users don’t get hooked, and the app is forgotten. Don’t waste the resources; invest in a better mobile web experience.

Thanks for reading today’s issue. If you have thoughts, hit reply or join the AMO Slack channel. Have a great weekend!