About Times of India
A media group started in 1838 and is the biggest media conglomerate in India today. They have a revenue of $1.3 billion per year coming through online, print, television and services like TimesMoney. Traditionally they have been able to balance the journalism needs and revenue making needs very well.
Why do this review of digital readership experience?
– Is the group geared up for the challenges for digital readership?
– Can they attractively sell online new subscriptions?
– How can they balance presentation of advertisements so that it doesn’t affect reading online news?
– Is this a clear mobile strategy pushing readers to download they app?
1) Crowded presentation of homepage while viewed on desktop
When online news readers land on the website they are bombarded with information which includes advertisement.
- Poor visual design offers poor readability.
- Content strategy seems to use every pixel possible to showcase content.
- Content not designed for scanning. Needs radical rethinking.
- Mobile app and mobile website seem to be clean in it design without the onslaught of grabbing every pixel content or advertisements.
- Could valuable content be sold in subscriptions to law enforcement agencies, educational institutes, copyrighted news material etc..?
2) Maintaining separately desktop vs mobile sites could be expensive.
– Use of mobile-dedicated website instead of responsive web strategy could make it expensive.
3) Mobile app downloads:
– App store displays 10 million downloads. But this is deceptive since app uninstalls stands at 44% as per app flyer data.
Missing to deliver on mobile strategy:
- Mobile devices are more in count and have better impacted life in India than desktop computers.
- Desktop computers are unaffordable still to most Indian people.
- Customizations don’t work as indicated by user review. User satisfaction is poor and needs improvement.
- Still 65% of India people live in villages and towns. This means English only strategy wouldn’t work.
