PageSuite has successfully upgraded more than 70 apps for Newsquest Media Group, across their News and Sports portfolio.

Each app is individually branded and offers readers a seamless experience across both edition-based content and live news. Content in the live news section is organised into specific sections and sub-sections and is presented using customised “card layouts”, designed specifically to maximise engagement with different content types.

Some apps also feature a ‘Best Of’ section, showcasing premium, subscriber-only content and helping readers quickly discover standout, must-read articles.

The sports apps, including the Pink Un and Rangers Review, feature dedicated Video timelines, adding another way to engage users alongside news article content.

To further boost engagement, many of the apps feature interactive puzzles, and some feature podcast feeds. Articles can also be read aloud via the native audio player.

This migration marks a significant milestone in providing Newsquest Media Group with a modern, scalable app platform that prioritises performance, engagement, and user experience.

We caught up with Chris Scarle, Platform Manager at Newsquest to see how things are going following the upgrade…

How have the apps performed since the migration in terms of downloads, active users, and session frequency? Have you noted any particular trends?

Since the release of the upgraded apps, we have seen a significant increase in user engagement, alongside growing active user volumes. We’re seeing engagement with our in-app subscribers hit record levels and increasing the percentage of our web-based subscribers who engage with the apps on a regular basis.

How are readers responding to puzzles?

The refinements we made to our interactive puzzles experience have helped improve the user experience and further increase the high-level engagement times we see from users playing puzzles in the apps

Although not as widely accessed as our live news or digital edition content streams, puzzles have a dedicated audience and engage them very effectively, generating impressive session duration times and event counts. We’re currently seeing users averaging 25-30 minutes on puzzles per day and accessing 3-5 puzzles.

Are readers spending more time within the eEditions or the live news feed?

We see a good balance of usage within our apps across our live news and digital edition content. Across the portfolio we see around 3 times more users engaging with article content than with our digital papers. However, users engaging with our digital papers are highly engaged and overall, we see a higher volume of pages viewed in editions compared to article pageviews.

Engagement times within editions are very high and we see a high percentage of users reading the majority of an edition when viewing.

Has the addition of the ‘Best Of’ section driven more engagement with popular articles?

The ‘Best Of’ section was conceived as a way to present our highest quality articles including those written by dedicated columnists, our long read pieces and all our great subscriber-only content. It gives users quick and easy access to the best quality content in one place within the app.

This came as part of our focus on reworking the article reading experience and offering a range of ways to access and engage with article based content.

Do you have any insights on how audio or video has impacted engagement or subscriptions?

The dedicated Video timelines we’ve introduced into our sports apps, alongside the podcast timelines in certain apps, have added engagement depth and allow our editorial teams to communicate with users in a more direct way.

We’re seeing great engagement with this content and it allows us to build new user habits alongside our existing content streams.

Are there upcoming plans to expand personalisation features?

We’ll be placing a lot of focus on personalisation over the next 6-12 months. This will be key in our aim to further increase user engagement, especially with our live news content experience in-app.

We’re exploring a number of options to deliver a more targeted news reading experience and looking at how we deliver this to users across both app and web to give a consistent user experience across both platforms.

What other initiatives are being considered to increase engagement and drive subscriptions across your app portfolio?

Increasing user engagement remains a primary aim for us and we’re looking at a number of areas in which we see potential to improve, both through refining existing content and functionality and through making additions to our current offering.

Video is an area we see potential to maximise more across our portfolio and we’re investigating AI generation and vertical video as potential opportunities to increase the core content streams within our apps.

A focus on communication with our users via push notifications and in-app messaging will be another key engagement tool for this year, as we increase our usage and refine targeting to drive optimum engagement.