One of Meredith’s leading titles adopts a mobile-first strategy; plus, acquisitions from Evolve Media and BNP Media
Is a mobile-first strategy a must for publishers at this point, regardless of audience demographics and content? The short answer is yes, but how should you execute it? Read our analysis of mobile-first strategy in the form of responsive vs. fluid design for the long answer.
Digital magazines are always looking for answers – new solutions for new revenue streams. In a few recent articles, Folio: covers one publisher that’s embracing mobile-first strategy and two others going the acquisition route.
Better Homes & Gardens’ New Mobile-First Strategy
Better Homes & Gardens already has 9 million unique monthly visitors, but move toward a mobile-first strategy has the Meredith property hoping it can capitalize on an audience that’s trending younger, with 49% under the age of 44, Folio: reports.
“Our goal with the new website was to have a more modern design that showcases the BHG imagery. We wanted to improve our mobile experience, improve the user experience around content discovery; daily content programming and we wanted to increase the page speed to make our users happier. So those are kind of the bigger goals that we had for the new site,” General Manager of Digital Lory Stewart tells Caysey Welton in an interview.
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“We’ve moved more to a modern usability feature so we have infinite scroll on our channel and category pages, more card layout, we’re better serving our content so videos, articles, slideshows, blogs, all of our content is going to be surfaced higher on the page so it gets to the user right away. The channel and category pages are by far our biggest change with the infinite scroll and card-type layout. … Our mobile environment wasn’t that great so we really focused on improving the mobile site experience with a responsive design. As I’ve said before we’ve moved to the more usable features by surfacing the content so we’re really thinking of mobile first.”
Evolve Media Buys Martini Media, Enters Luxury Market
Evolve Media is on quite an acquisitions streak – five in the past year alone – and its latest purchase propels it into affluent media circles, Folio: reports. Martini Media is a luxury audience development firm with 33 employees, all of whom will join Evolve. The company brings in upward of $20 million a year in revenue.
BNP Media Acquires Three Magazines From Dodge Data & Analytics
Architectural Record, Engineering News-Record, and SNAP are now part of BNP Media, Folio: reports. This adds to a growing BNP stable of B2B magazines, while phasing Dodge Data & Analytics out of the sector. The monthly Architectural Record is the key property in this deal, Folio: reports, with a 93,000 circulation and nearly 300,000 monthly uniques. The weekly Engineering-News Record, meanwhile, has a 62,000 circulation and roughly 300,000 monthly uniques.
According to Folio:, BNP will expand its staff.
Do you have a mobile-first strategy? Tell us more in the comments!
To read more about mobile-first strategy in the news, visit FolioMag.com.
