Mobile applications and media decomposition
If one and a half or two years ago, major media publishers had doubts about whether the concept of mobile applications is so important for them (at first they used the services much more actively than the media ones), now this question is no longer relevant. The answer is: vital. For example, in August, already 35% of the content readings of our Sports.ru and Tribuna.com is done using applications for smartphones and tablets. Moreover, the growth of this share is only accelerating, and for 50% this figure will exceed, it seems, by the Olympic Games in Sochi.
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The main question is now formulated differently: how to transfer to the mobile all that enormous amount of content and functionality that have acquired media sites in the course of its development? Portals and large thematic sites are now complex, like a Swiss knife - with all its headings, subheadings, a variety of content formats and services. Years of web development have taught that improvement = complication, the addition of new services, features and content, settings for all occasions.
Applications (at least, we came to this conclusion studying service) dictate the opposite approach: improvement is almost always a simplification:
1) A person should not get confused in the functions and settings - and the small screen does not allow all possible to fit.
2) A person should get what he needs, as quickly as possible and without unnecessary scrolling (the average session in mobile of the average user of the applications Sports.ru is half as long as the user of the web version of the site, but he has more of these sessions). It’s not a fact that at this time he is sitting at the table or lying on the sofa, it is quite possible - that he is traveling in transport, is standing in line at the supermarket, etc.
3) In applications, there is no SEO optimization, and navigation is extremely concise. And, perhaps, it is this, in fact, the forced absence of visual noise that is so conducive to their use: in them only the content - and nothing more.
We took simplicity as the basic principle in the design of Sports.ru and Tribuna.com's main all-sports applications. It seems not lost. Only when you tell yourself that applications are not a copy of the site, but another product, it turns out to accept the reduction of 50% of the functionality. And it was easy to determine 50% of what was necessary in our case: of course, these are the most popular content and services, as well as those related to obtaining the most up-to-date sports information that is currently being updated.
But to what extent can it be simplified? Our version of the answer to this question: it seems there is no limit.
Recently, we decided to experiment and made the first batch of applications aimed at fans of specific teams. And we are still shocked by the success with which he turned around. After all, club apps were then just a little more than just content filtering on a topic, seasoned with background information such as statistics or calendars. By success, we mean easily measurable parameters - the ratios of downloads with active use (more than half of those who downloaded started using these applications actively and regularly), as well as a huge number of enthusiastic reviews in the stores and excellent ratings - almost all club applications are in the range of 4.7 - 4 ,9.
Since then, we have already released several dozen applications for fans of all the prominent Russian and western football and hockey clubs, as well as the Russian team ( for Android a little more , for iOS a little less , but we will soon add the missing ones). They also figured out how to add value to applications that are fundamentally new compared to the site. This will be in the next releases, since we now understand that they make sense, and the idea of ​​decomposing the “big” media into intelligible, thematic, having separate Central Asian components is quite viable. I wonder why the vast majority of it still does not use?
')
The main question is now formulated differently: how to transfer to the mobile all that enormous amount of content and functionality that have acquired media sites in the course of its development? Portals and large thematic sites are now complex, like a Swiss knife - with all its headings, subheadings, a variety of content formats and services. Years of web development have taught that improvement = complication, the addition of new services, features and content, settings for all occasions.
Applications (at least, we came to this conclusion studying service) dictate the opposite approach: improvement is almost always a simplification:
1) A person should not get confused in the functions and settings - and the small screen does not allow all possible to fit.
2) A person should get what he needs, as quickly as possible and without unnecessary scrolling (the average session in mobile of the average user of the applications Sports.ru is half as long as the user of the web version of the site, but he has more of these sessions). It’s not a fact that at this time he is sitting at the table or lying on the sofa, it is quite possible - that he is traveling in transport, is standing in line at the supermarket, etc.
3) In applications, there is no SEO optimization, and navigation is extremely concise. And, perhaps, it is this, in fact, the forced absence of visual noise that is so conducive to their use: in them only the content - and nothing more.
We took simplicity as the basic principle in the design of Sports.ru and Tribuna.com's main all-sports applications. It seems not lost. Only when you tell yourself that applications are not a copy of the site, but another product, it turns out to accept the reduction of 50% of the functionality. And it was easy to determine 50% of what was necessary in our case: of course, these are the most popular content and services, as well as those related to obtaining the most up-to-date sports information that is currently being updated.
But to what extent can it be simplified? Our version of the answer to this question: it seems there is no limit.
Recently, we decided to experiment and made the first batch of applications aimed at fans of specific teams. And we are still shocked by the success with which he turned around. After all, club apps were then just a little more than just content filtering on a topic, seasoned with background information such as statistics or calendars. By success, we mean easily measurable parameters - the ratios of downloads with active use (more than half of those who downloaded started using these applications actively and regularly), as well as a huge number of enthusiastic reviews in the stores and excellent ratings - almost all club applications are in the range of 4.7 - 4 ,9.
Since then, we have already released several dozen applications for fans of all the prominent Russian and western football and hockey clubs, as well as the Russian team ( for Android a little more , for iOS a little less , but we will soon add the missing ones). They also figured out how to add value to applications that are fundamentally new compared to the site. This will be in the next releases, since we now understand that they make sense, and the idea of ​​decomposing the “big” media into intelligible, thematic, having separate Central Asian components is quite viable. I wonder why the vast majority of it still does not use?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/191948/
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