December 16, 2013

Rodale’s Men’s Health Magazine is continuous its efforts in mobile with new updates to its digital publication that experience spurred high click-through rates.

The publication recently partnered with ShopAdvisor to make its content shoppable, and it has also added other features inclusive of image sequences and a free preview function in iTunes Newsstand. Men’s Health publishes its digital and mobile offerings using Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite.

“We are looking to deliver our products to our readers and fans wherever they’re, whenever they need them — in both digital and print,” said Bill Phillips, editor in chief of Men’s Health, Manhattan. “With 115,000 paid subscribers, our digital editions are an important and fast-growing business for us.

“More importantly, they’re introducing new readers to our brand,” he said. “By the tip of the month, we’ll be at the Windows platform besides.

“We’re always testing new features and new capabilities. Interestingly, nearly 40 percent of engaged readers clicked through to a retailer’s website.”

Men’s Health enhanced
Men’s Health is continually working to supply a neater experience for its readers.

The ShopAdvisor partnership helped bridge the distance between browsing and shopping. If a reader sees something he likes within the mobile publication, he can click it to really purchase it.

This takes away several steps that may have hindered the ultimate purchase.

Men’s Health has also added more image sequences to interactive workouts to let readers pause the movements during any stage of the exercise.

Additionally, Men’s Health has leveraged one among Adobe’s features that lets new consumers access free previews before actually purchasing the magazine. When consumers download the Men’s Health app from iTunes Newsstand, they’ll immediately access sample content.

Then in the event that they enjoy what they read, they could choose to purchase a subscription. This process simulates the act of browsing a mag in a book store after which deciding whether to buy it.

Another addition that Men’s Health recently made was producing eBook singles from two of its long-form features.

One of Men’s Health’s biggest challenges in mobile and digital is ensuring quality user experience.

“When we first began internal discussions about our iPhone edition, i used to be worried that the experience can be too overwhelming and cluttered,” Mr. Phillips said. “But the design team did a super job simplifying the presentation.

“They’ve discovered tips to take the a lot of useful stuff within the magazine every month, add video and other interactivity, and present it on a 4-inch screen in a unbroken way,” he said. “The navigation is especially initiative. We’re taking those learnings and applying them across all our digital products.”

A paywall from a free preview

Digital publishing
Men’s Health is among the publications leveraging Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite to digitize their content.

Adobe recently came out with new data from its offering and located that there was a 115 percent increase in downloads of all DPS publications until now year. Its apps even have thrice as many unique monthly readers as last year.

Readers also are spending more time within DPS apps than within print publications. In step with Adobe, they may be spending a mean of fifty minutes a month in a DPS app, compared with 40 minutes a month in a print magazine.

An infographic from Adobe

The key in translating print publications to mobile and digital, however, is taking the content to a brand new level in preference to simply copying print content onto a brand new channel. Mobile allows publications together with Men’s Health to augment their content with new features comparable to the power to click-through to buy.

Mobile publications may also add social sharing on to content in addition to send push notifications to alert readers of recent issues and produce them back to the app.

“This is among the strongest features since it keeps readers coming back,” said Bridget Roman, senior product marketing manager of digital publishing at Adobe, San Jose, CA. “It gives publishers the power to alert readers when the most recent issue is accessible, but they’re able to also alert them to off-time news.

“Esquire has various tools and content that brings readers back on a consistent basis, and they’re integrating push notifications to just do that, alert readers, bring them back for articles,” she said. “We’ve seen Martha Stewart cross promote magazines, and if she has a brand new item available at home depot she uses push notifications to share that.

“They can send a message only to single issue subscribers to get them to upgrade to a whole subscription- that may be coming soon. It enables publishers to do more specific targeting.”

Final Take
Rebecca Borison is editorial assistant on Mobile Marketer, New York