Empowering the good news reading- and listening habits

The Client

Dagbladet Information is a well-established Danish newspaper publisher with a short, but exciting history. It began during WW2 under German occupation as an illegal news agency, but became an official newspaper publisher on the night of liberation the 5th of May, 1945, when they, as part of the resistance, took over the building of the Nazi newspaper “Fædrelandet” on Store Kongensgade in Copenhagen. The office space they still “occupy” today. 

Information has more than 167.000 weekly readers and are well on their way in digitizing and optimizing their product portfolio for the digital era of newspaper publishing. Their vision is to make newspaper consumption easy, enjoyable and accessible for anyone, anywhere.

The Challenge

Dagbladet Information saw the need for having their own digital outlet, bringing together their variety of ways of consuming their news in one, mobile place. The challenge for us was to create a universe that was easy to access and easy to digest, which would help Information reach their goals of increased consumption and attracting new as well as retaining existing subscribers.

We came to the project believing that it all starts with creating the foundation for the subscribers’ reading habits to initiate, empower and stick! An easy and frictionless subscription sign-up process would initiate a good habit in usage, a user-friendly and enjoyable news universe would empower the habit of consumption, in all, making it more likely for the subscribers to retain their habits and even increase their consumption - thus also decreasing the likelihood of unsubscribing. 

The possibilities of consumption should be almost endless, so whatever your habit is, whether you prefer reading your news on the phone with your morning coffee, listening to your news on the car stereo on your way to work or consuming the news podcast on your lunch break - the digital news outlet should support and empower exactly that. Your habit.

The Solution

Techstack: Native App, Drupal, Parsley, Tealium, Symplify, Firebase

We have developed an application that adapts to the individuals’ needs, creating a visually appealing and easy onboarding flow from which the subscribers can select their preferred consumption method (reading, listening or both) and preferred time of consumption (morning, noon, afternoon and/or evening). The page the users meet when opening the app is tailored to their choices. Consumption of news via read-loud articles and podcast has increased since the launch of those services, thus to maximize utilization of sound content, we made it possible to play it no matter where in the app subscribers are located. Version 1.0 of the app is now live, but new features and versions are in the pipeline to continue to improve the user experience.

The Results

Because an app project is a living project that can lead in many directions, open undiscovered possibilities and create new developments as we go along, a close collaboration between Dagbladet Information and us was critical to make sure we would stay true to the newspapers identity and history, their business model, customers and their way of working with news publishing. The app is a visual representation of a valuable partnership coming to life and a significant leap in Dagbladet Information’s new and clear digital direction.

So where do we go from here? We keep developing, optimizing and improving a solution tailored to your news consumption habits. Several version upgrades are already in pipeline. We encourage you to visit your potential new news habitat and consume it however and whenever you want.