Roularta boosts digital delivery by 40% with a future-ready magazine app

Roularta Media Group leads the Belgian magazines market with well-known brands such as Knack, Trends, Libelle, Flair and Sport/Voetbalmagazine. To offer their readers an attractive digital (and mobile) alternative for their paper magazines, Roularta Media Group wanted to launch a completely renewed app, as the previous app was complex and limited in features. AE was asked to step in and help design and develop the new app.

01 - Challenge

With print declining and digital lagging, Roularta went back to the drawing board to win over a new generation of readers.

Paper media have been struggling with a declining reader market for years. More and more people are eyeing digital alternatives. Roularta Media Group experimented with a digital mobile alternative. But this first version struggled and scored poorly in convincing the young generation to subscribe. "At the moment, only a good 5 percent of our subscriptions are purely digital", said Roularta CEO Xavier Bouckaert in an interview. That's why Roularta decided to go back to the drawing board for their mobile app.

02 - Solution

In partnership with Roularta, we rebuilt a live app step by step—faster releases, better UX, 40% more impact with the same effort.

We collaborated closely with Roularta to stabilize and refactor their "Mijn Magazines" app. The app was rebuilt entirely on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. It's ready for upcoming features and boasts quicker development cycles and enhanced user experiences. The biggest challenge – changing the app while it was operating at full capacity – was tackled by a step-by-step rebuild. AE released a new version of the app every two weeks. Together, progress was measured, monitored and incorporated into new plans. "The speed of development increased exponentially. We achieved 40 percent more with the same budget and efforts", explains Luc Neysens, CIO of Roularta Media Group.

We were able to benefit from AE's extensive knowledge, their creativity, active way of thinking and methodical approach. The AE team became the catalyst for our digital strategy.

Luc Neysens, CIO Roularta Media Group

03 - Outcome

In record time, a rebuilt app brought subscribers back—more stable, more engaging, and ready for the next step.

Less than six months after we started, the app had been rebuilt and the first new features launched. The results followed just as quickly. More sleeping subscribers found their way back to the app. Moreover, subscribers stayed on the app longer and read more articles. "In less than three months, the biggest problems were resolved, and the app ran more stable than ever before", says Luc Neysens proudly. "By splitting the back and front end, we were able to improve the app for our readers, even though our underlying processes were not yet optimal. In the next phase we will upgrade and simplify the underlying complex structures, the API, the data and internal programs."

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