How the Telegraph developed its paid iPad app

An insight into the work behind the scenes on The Telegraph’s iPad app - moving from a free/insight gathering stage to paid.

Taken from Tim Rowell, Telegraph Director of Mobile Product Development's presentation, at the Media Briefing’s Mobile Strategies event.

First Launch

The iPad launches in the UK in May 2010, and the Telegraph decides not to go with a launch app. Instead, the team research the market, and develop an initial product that would assist in answering the key questions it had: 

• Who would buy the app?
• Would they be Telegraph print readers?
• How would people use the device?
• Should it focus on live breaking news site or be a digital edition?

   
September 2010 – the free launch app goes live, featuring a selection of stories from the website(the original title, ‘Best of Telegraph’ was rejected by Apple). Crucially, it's able to capture plenty of data, from three main sources -

• A request for user info on installation, which got 60k responses – a handle on user demographics
• Analytics tracking installed on the app – providing info on usage: time of day, day of week, swiping. Unexpectedly showed that 90% of content was being consumed via wifi
• 1800 further users gave detailed, qualitative feedback via a form in the settings option of the app

...Read the full case study here.