The browser as a killer app

Posted by Dean Roper on October 18, 2011 at 10:31 AM

Wolfgang Blau, editor-in-chief, Zeit Online, describes how the well-known weekly newspaper in Germany is bucking the tablet app trend by building its browser as the killer app.

"We decided early on to adopt a product-centric strategy for tablets vs. a device-centric approach," he says at the World Editors Forum session on "The steps toward a successful tablet application."

So the company decided to build an HTML5-optimised website for the tablet, and all content for that would be free, while all of its print products on the tablet would be paid-for in a conventional app.

As a result, visitors to its tablet-enhanced website are reading content for longer periods than on its traditional website, and spending more time there per visit. Naturally, Blau says, this is attractive for advertisers.

The newspaper is leveraging its data journalism strengths by integrating its code programmers into the newsroom, working alongside editors and graphics artists to help create a good reader experience.

He says there are a number of advantages to the paper's approach, including:

Scalability to other tablet types
Shorter product cycles
Lower development costs
Lower maintenance costs
Coherence of desktop and tablet solutions
Own their own metrics: "We want to know exactly who our customers are and what they are reading."
Own your own customer data
More users
Higher advertising revenue
Flexibility for new ad formats

On the downside, they have no in-app purchase possibilities and no push alerts, but he thinks this will be solved in the future.

He points out that this approach would probably be difficult for a daily.