We all use flip style digital editions but know that it’s not the experience we envision for our audience. Especially when we scale to a tablet or mobile device – and that’s almost half our audience in digital terms today.
Why Don’t We Love The Traditional Digital Replicas?
Because we know deep down that something is not right when a beautifully designed editorial experience becomes click – flip – wait, or is reduced to a thumbnail size on mobile we can’t even read. Not to mention the ugly interface and toolbars. Or worse yet, we’re fragmented for our articles only on a newsstand app or cluttered with ads by a platform with a cheap fee.
So Here’s the Problem.
We never imagined a paginated, linear, periodical deliverable on our PC screens over a decade ago when we first realized we need a digital delivery component. Nothing made sense at the time because mobile devices hadn’t evolved and we were still trying to figure out how our websites added value to the magazine brand.
Along came flash based page flip animation and we all jumped on board for digital replicas of our print layout magazine. And audiences understood that we had put the magazine online. Never mind that it was a chore to manipulate and read.
Then we moved on to try and keep up with multi-channel apps and 3rd party publishing platforms plus the array of workflows because the experts said to be everywhere.
Let’s Consider A Modern Approach
Devices have evolved and today we can offer a mobile web responsive edition that we control from our branded domain and not our printer or digital platform vendor’s URL. A vertical edition means that our audiences can control their velocity and with a completely responsive design structure and progression awareness we keep the linear experience that’s critical to our publishing business model.
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More about David: David Blankenship is Founder of VERTIQUL by Advontemedia, which represents the perfect delivery format based on modern user experience and real reader behavior. They’ve built a creative platform structure that preserves the style that makes magazines great not only for today, but for the digital future.As a new sponsor participating in our Niche Solutions Guide, it’s worth a look at their examples. They have many customized options and even a new “Preview Edition” service for those married to an older digital edition platform for full issues.
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Niche Media has the best events, education, and training in media! Our super niched-out events & content give target-audience publishers in the B2C, hobbyist, B2B, city & regional, and association markets the tools they need to build revenue, audience, and more.
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