2014 was PressPad’s best year so far. We grew our publisher base and developed PressPad software, with new features such as rich media support and iBeacons compatibility. In June we extended our operation into Japan and our apps reached a total of one million installs.
We are confident that the New Year will bring lots of changes to the digital publishing industry, changes that we will be part of.
Right now we are working on a new digital publishing product that will have all it takes to redefine the meaning of the “digital magazine”. We’ll come back to that later on; first lets take a look at what digital publishers should know about the digital publishing landscape for the forthcoming year.
Expect more from your website
Continuous streams of new apps make app stores enormously crowded places. With the current App Store and Google Play, design and promotion of new apps is both challenging and demanding. In such an environment, app marketing has to be one of the most important activities app developers should focus on for the coming year. Digital publishers should expect more from their websites.
Almost a year ago, we created this hypothesis that “The sale starts outside App Store”. Our internal study showed that the Top 10 best performing publishers of ours had fantastic circle of websites and blogs, and they were easily googleable. »
To test this hypothesis, we analysed data from seven million views of the PressPad widget – over 100 publishers placed on their websites. As expected, websites play an important role in digital publishing as they drive quality traffic to the App Store. PressPad provides dedicated Web Store Widgets, with digital editions ready to be bought and experienced on mobile. The average conversion rate into app installation were nearly 20% during a 9 month period. That is huge!
Tip for digital magazine publishers: Promote your magazine app on your websites and blogs. PressPad widget and PressPad web store widget will help to convert website visits into installs of the app.
Design for mobile
Vast amounts of publishers use the same PDF magazine layout for their digital and print editions. Since readers have a better understanding of mobile technology, they expect a better reading experience on their handhelds.
While PressPad’s mobile engine offers fantastic options, such as adjusting PDF into landscape double-page view, hyperlink interpretation and native navigation, well designed PDF magazines can also take what’s best from this.
In 2015 publishers will focus on delivering a better reading experience, more suitable for medium sized displays.
More video, more fun
2014 was the year when mobile video started to play a more important role in the digital ecosystem. Facebook is to blame due to their auto-play function, you probably experience this on a daily basis!
Mobile technology adoption and faster internet connection will be catalysing this trend. PressPad online video support will improve the digital magazine experience on both iOS and Android platforms.
Users simply got used to watching more online videos in 2014, and 2015 will be more video orientated than ever.
Android strikes back
The mobile market is divided almost fifty-fifty between iOS and Android powered devices. Data from 9.5 million views of PressPad widgets proves this, with 49% iOS compared to 47% Android adoption.
Our data shows that between Dec 20th 2013 and December 19th 2014, this market share oscillated between the two, with a small dominance of Android at the beginning of the year, ending with Apple taking the lead.
We expect Android to take a strong fight to iOS in 2015, especially as the major Google upgrade, Android 5.0 Lollipop, has been rolling out. It is going to be a huge milestone for Google and the entire digital publishing industry.
Will Apple lose its domination of the digital publishing scene in 2015? We are ready for the challenge!
Wishing you a Happy New Year 2015.