There’s a shift happening in the app industry, a shift in the type of mobile apps being developed and used. Organizations are spotting trends in mobile applications as smartphones and tablets are gaining popularity and regular customers continue to acquire mobile apps quickly. Mobile apps – whether for business or for internal communication – can be quite helpful! 

From GPS devices in automobiles to touchscreen televisions on airplanes, smartphones, and tablets to sophisticated MP3 players, it’s evident that consumers love their touchscreen devices. Consumer-facing applications continue to be extremely popular, but it’s the enterprise app that is truly on the rise. For those of you that are asking yourselves, what is enterprise application development? Let’s brush up on the facts. 

Mobile apps for businesses or mobile apps for enterprises are proprietary, in-house apps that can be privately distributed to a set of individuals. A business, for example, could distribute its enterprise app through email, or even upload it to the company intranet. In order to develop an enterprise application, you must have an IOS enterprise developer license. 

Though enterprise needs are very different from consumer needs, it’s clear that in some instances, mobile apps provide a more efficient and effective way to complete the day-to-day tasks of business managers.  

Here are some examples of what an enterprise mobile app can do for your business:   

• Aid in customer satisfaction: Customizable enterprise apps could activate your sales team, resulting in dynamic and immersive experiences throughout every customer meeting. 
• Electronic sales tool: If electronic forms are included, an enterprise mobile app can transform into a fantastic sales tool. Imagine an automobile salesperson interacting with a customer on the floor, where he can quickly offer the consumer his tablet and ask them to complete a quick survey as they make their way to the next car. This may help in gaining valuable customer data without interrupting the sales pitch. 
• Collect customer intelligence: An enterprise app’s integrated personalization tools can assist in gathering consumer intelligence, which is essential for all businesses. 
• Enhancing real-time internal communication: To maintain smooth operation given the complexity of any business, effective internal communication is required. Digital tools have made it easier for managers to keep an eye on inventory from a distance. Mobile apps for businesses especially have helped them solve the challenges of internal communication. 
• Better employee engagement: Employee engagement continues to be a crucial component of a successful organization. Nowadays, the majority of workers keep a constant connection via their cellphones, so mobile connectivity is crucial for increasing productivity and efficiency. A mobile app as a communication channel among employees just helps everyone stay in touch and tuned. 

The enterprise mobile app category continues to grow while providing many benefits, including productivity and efficiency, to both small and large businesses. Today’s technology provides unlimited opportunities for business-focused mobile apps. Alongside assistance with internal communication and sales, such mobile apps can drive significant revenue for businesses in a variety of ways:  

• Push notifications keep a business at the top of a consumer’s mind.  
• Mobile apps can offer additional sales opportunities through eCommerce technology.  
• Apps allow businesses to reach a defined market through geo-targeting and audience segmentation.  
• Local businesses can compete on a global level when correctly utilizing mobile apps.  
• The data that businesses can collect through mobile apps help with future business decisions and strategies. 

Confidentiality and app security are two major reasons behind the popularity of mobile apps for businesses. In other words, business-focused apps ensure to keep the data safe and secure throughout their entire lifecycle, which is why enterprise professionals are eyeing at such apps.  

Enterprise apps also get to promote themselves in authentic ways. Building a viral component into an enterprise app is always a good idea. Leveraging viral user behavior, triggers, and incentives will help any enterprise mobile app reach a larger audience of potential customers. 

A custom enterprise mobile application (Mobile Apps for Enterprises) can be developed for both iOS and Android tablets and smartphones to serve as the backbone of your business process and also provide effective internal communications and employee satisfaction, since mobile apps have proved to be a crucial tool to keep people connected, linked, and informed.  

Whether your corporation is working on a business app that can be downloaded from Google or Apple app store, or an enterprise app that will be privately distributed, mag+ can help you reach your goals. mag+ offers flexible and advanced tools to help you with custom mobile app development. From ideation to quality assurance to launching on the respective play store, the team will collaborate with you in each stage to deliver a stunning mobile app for your business.  

A digital magazine is a preferred means of communication between publishers and readers in today’s world of digitization. With the proliferation of smart technology, even non-publisher brands are enabled to uplift their branding through such engaging magazines, which allow the readers to stay connected on the go at their convenience.   

When it comes to distributing your digital magazine, there is more than one way to publish it online. While considering the right option, it’s necessary to consider your requirements such as usability, app features, marketing plan, and user access.   

We have broadly categorized the digital publishing solutions into two types:  

• Web apps: Accessed by a browser and written using HTML5 or related web technologies.  
• Native apps: Downloaded to your device using an application store such as Google Play or Apple’s App store and accessed using the icons on the home page of your device.  

Ways of publishing an online magazine   

Both web app and native app magazine publishing have various specific features. Choosing the right solution out of these is based on your requirements and preferences. However, native app publishing wins over web app publishing if the following factors are your priority.  

• A myriad of features: Native apps have complete access to the device-exclusive features such as GPS, camera, call, notifications, accelerometers, and others.  
• Smoother, user-friendly apps: They are consistent with the respective mobile operating system and provide a great interface to enhance the user experience.  
• Reduced loading time: Faster apps for maintaining responsiveness, leading to high usability.  
• Offline features: Functions for users to easily read the downloaded content, even with no Net connectivity.  
• Ease of monetization: Out-of-the-box monetization can be enjoyed using play stores.  

Considering the popularity of native app publishing, we are restricting the scope of our discussion to this digital magazine publishing platform. To help launch your native app, there are seemingly endless numbers of digital publishing platforms available in the market. mag+ is a highly flexible digital magazine publishing platform that can support you to efficiently design, enhance, produce and publish your digital magazine.  

mag+ for all your digital publishing needs 

mag+ has established itself as a leader among digital publishing platforms and has been trusted by clients worldwide. mag+ is an old player and has pioneered publishing on the first iPad. It is the most interactive and professional tool with its focus on user-friendly, creative, and dynamic apps.     

Publishers can easily transfer their pdf or digital content into these apps using their rich knowledge base without having any programming know-how. The designed app can then be distributed over a wide range of mobile devices such as iPad, iPhone, Android (phone and tablet), and Kindle Fire. An important feature exists to preview and test your apps before publishing them to various app stores. For a complete understanding of digital publishing with mag+, go through www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKM1IFKr0eo.   

mag+Designd, a mag+ tool, is a plug-in for Adobe InDesign, the standard design software of the industry. Publishers can proficiently design their apps by using well-defined templates and clean layouts in mag+Designd. Some of the features of mag+Designd are listed below to help you make a smart choice.  

• No coding skills: Users can instantly start publishing their native apps using mag+.  
• Highly interactive: The digital content is further enriched by embedding countless features such as audio, video, graphics, web links, jump links, zooming, slideshow, 360-degree view, easy scrolling, animations, pop-ups, pinning, spanning, push notifications, and others.  
• Full HTML support: HTML elements can be created or seamlessly embedded in your mag+ issue.  
• Updated and branded apps: Completely branded apps are distributed on Google Play, iTunes, Apple’s app store, and Amazon’s Kindle store.  
• Multi-device export: Publishers can save a lot of time and energy by designing only one layout and automatically transferring it to various layouts. Thus, apps, once designed, can be distributed to multiple devices at a time.  
• Instant design review: mag+ reviewer app lets you instantly preview your designs on the device and get a sense of your app.  
• In-app library with archiving: Using this feature, the users can manage multiple documents and issues on their devices. They can also be archived to free up space.  
• Offline support: The downloaded documents can be accessed anywhere, even when the reader is offline.  
• User engagement: Engaging apps are published using multiple feedback channels, targeted messaging, in-app ratings, and social sharing.  
• Third-party marketing and messaging tools.  
• Monetization: Subscription support, in-app purchasing, advertising, and promotion activities are supported.  
• App analytics: mag+ helps you to track your app’s behavior and performance in multiple ways and understand your consumers better.  
• Consulting and support services: In addition to comprehensive on-site support resources, the support team at mag+ is always there for your consultation and support needs.  

mag+ provides various packages to match everyone’s needs and expectations. It aims to deliver specific app services to fit the publisher’s requirements. One can also intuitively personalize their digital magazine using customization services. Customizing your app allows you to have flexibility and complete control over your app. mag+ has solutions for all kinds of publishers and entities seeking to strengthen their presence in the digital publishing space. From university magazines to S&M collaterals, you can design and disseminate all types of content with mag+. To explore more, reach out to us today!  

Are you enthralled by the digital publishing reality? Are you curious to know what the future of digital publishing beholds? 

If your answers to the above questions are yes, then you are in the right place. We are here to analyze the present era of digital publishing and try to predict the future in this industry. 

Digital publishing has revolutionized the world over the last decade and is ready to witness the future. Rapidly adapting to the new trends, there is no looking back for this booming industry. Let’s start and walk through the present and future of digital publishing. 

Key highlights of the present scenario in digital publishing  

With improvements in technology and its wider acceptance due to the reducing costs, digital publishing has become a part of our daily lives. The following are the present trends in digital publishing: 

Reading and grabbing the information was never so easy. Digital publishing has made it possible to access exhaustive information just in seconds. Today, we are living in a world where we can instantly search for the solution to all our problems with just a single tap. 

Mobile-first has become a priority. Publishers are focusing on mobile-friendly content design and optimization techniques. It has become essential as mobiles have become affordable to people and allow users to read at their convenience- at home, at work, or on the go.   

Interactive and engaging content is highly demanded. Dynamic content is curated to engage customers and provide them with a great user experience. Content is made highly engaging to retain and grow the customer base by adding interactive entities. 

Augmented reality has made a way for the publishing industry. It helps publishers in bringing stories to life in an innovative manner. For example, an official airline magazine app introduced AR for its in-flight magazine. The digital magazine is made more interactive by bringing to life the images on the cover page and inside the magazine. Hovering the smartphone over an image in the digital magazine opens up complete and engaging information about it. 

Personalized experience is in practice these days. Every user has the freedom to access the web as per their likes and dislikes. For example, Facebook suggests friends for you, Amazon suggests products to buy and a news app customizes the news as per your tastes. 

Key predictions of the future scenario in digital publishing 

The future of digital publishing is expected to experience more structural changes with improved business models. Let’s go through some of the foreseeable future aspects of digital publishing. 

User experience is the driving factor of this niche and cannot be ignored. Publishers will enhance it by making more appropriate use of video and audio and removing popups or ads that come in the way of content consumption.  

The mobile-first strategy is here to stay. With an ever-increasing population consuming mobile content, it will remain a priority to optimize small screens. It can be done by devising methods to increase page load speed and click-through rates. Also, the users will be able to seamlessly consume the content by switching devices. 

Revenue generation is an evergreen aspect of any business. Publishers are constantly looking for promising methods to generate more profits. In the future, publishers are expected to look for innovative methods like better subscription management, native ads only, and micropayments to access unique content.  

Personalization for an individual is set to be further improved. An even more personalized experience can be tailored for every individual with better customer segregation, preference, and predictability. It is possible to feel as if everything is as per one’s interests and priorities. 

Virtual reality is a potential field that is sure to bring wonders if used deliberately and efficiently. It can be of great advantage in the field of digital publishing. Isn’t that exciting to think of a world that you can experience even though it does not exist? Imagine that you are on a dinosaur island, where you are running in a jungle beside these creatures while reading the study material. 

Furthermore, technologies like Artificial intelligence and Augmented Reality are a powerhouse to bring about improved features if used effectively. These can be leveraged to optimize the user experience. 

To summarize, the digital publishing industry is in full swing and expected to bloom in the coming times to gain users’ attention and reliance. The present times of digital publishing are soon becoming the past and the future is all set to be the present. Using the right tools at the right time will lead to a sustainable, user-friendly, and acceptable digital revolution. To get a hold of these and newer opportunities, reach out to us here! 

Over the years, the mag+ app has focused squarely on providing engaging, secure, and robust digital publishing services and has gained a broad clientele from all over the world. It allows you to design and distribute customized, stunning content mobile apps, such as digital magazines, without any hassle. 

You can publish your content on almost all the mobile devices in the market, like iPad, iPhones, Android tablets and smartphones, and Amazon Kindle fire. mag+ has proved its mettle in publishing diversified app content for digital magazines, brochures, universities, and many more. You provide your content and mag+ is there to publish it for you.  

Using the mag+ app, you can publish the following app content to enjoy an assured presence in the market and take your business to new heights.

Various contents published by mag+ app

Magazines 

Design and distribute your digital magazine using mag+ and remain in touch with your readers anywhere and everywhere. Make your magazine stand out by adding rich media and other interactive features to your print content. mag+ has expertise in publishing the following categories of magazines: 

• Consumer magazine: This is a preferred mode of publication if your targeted audience has a broader range of interests. You can share your daily, weekly, or monthly content with your consumers.
• Member magazine: Stay in frequent touch with the members of your community. Keep them updated with all the advances and trends. Your community may comprise a group of people with similar interests,for instance, they can be sports enthusiasts or those interested in photography. 
• Trade magazine: Publish a magazine to provide information and news about a specific industry. You can inform your readers about the latest industry standards, development, interviews, and other professional details. 

Some of the prestigious clients of mag+ publishing magazines are: 

• New York Magazine: Taking advantage of the mag+ SDK, they created a custom app. This app combines weekly magazine content with daily website content in an innovative way. 
• Aeron Photography: This is a photographic journey publication containing stunning images. Each image is accompanied by relevant information, tips, and links. 

Sales materials 

Replace your cumbersome sales documents by using the outstanding digital publication services of mag+. You can publish your content in the form of sales documents, product specifications, and features. Use mag+ design features to completely revamp your marketing strategy. mag+ has expertise in publishing the following categories of sales materials: 

• Presentation: Publish your sales presentation to list all the specifications of new products and services. Make them more engaging by using mag+ tools. 
• Support tools: Provide instant support to your users. Present all your support tools in digital form to reach out to the masses. Enhance the support tools by embedding videos, detailed diagrams, and other mag+ features.  
• Reports: Make those detailed reports more creative by using mag+ tools. Let your reports speak for your services using high-quality charts and graphs. Make them readily available to your users. 

Some of the prestigious clients of mag+ publishing sales materials are: 

• Volvo FH: This is the ultimate app for the world of truckers. It showcases stunning images, high-quality videos, and interactive panoramas. 
• Merchant Warehouse Genius: It supports mobile commerce and traditional payments from the user’s device. This helps educate new hires as well as customers about the organization’s products.

Marketing 

mag+ helps you to present your brand in a creative app and stand out from the crowd. It lets you establish a personal connection with your customer. You can reach your existing or potential customers instantly and leave a mark. Let your users visualize your activities and achievements. 

mag+ has expertise in publishing the following categories of marketing content: 

• Event programs: Keep your audience updated with the event’s happenings. Embed clean layouts, maps, and images to readily connect to your audience using mag+. 
• Data visualization: Let your users innovatively visualize your company’s data. Use charts and graphs to make them more engaging 
• Corporate communications: Manage your company’s communication flow and annual reports. Content creation using mag+ and make them more engaging. 
• Presentations: Let the marketing presentations speak for themselves.

Some of the prestigious clients of mag+ publishing marketing content are: 

• Unilever Greece: This app illustrates business philosophy using interactive features like photos, videos, and animations.
• The V&A: This app contains the talks, tours, and calendar of special events at the Victoria and Albert Museum. 

Guides and brochures

Present natural interactivity and beautiful layouts to your guides. Your brochure for an existing or newly introduced product or service can be published as an app to keep your users informed on the go. All the minute details you want them to know are improved with the help of highlights, animations, navigations, pop-ups, and interactive multimedia. mag+ has expertise in publishing the following categories of guides and brochures: 

• Travel guides and exhibits: Enable your users to explore various places and have an awesome experience. Enhance their experience using multimedia, push notifications, and web links. 
• Product guides: Interactive, compelling, and engaging content creation for your buyers. 
• Digital brochures: Enhance the interactivity in those lengthy and boring brochures by presenting them digitally in a new way. 

Some of the prestigious clients of mag+ publishing guides and brochures are: 

• National Geographic explorer: It is a multimedia magazine for kids and their parents. It helps learn and educate about the creatures and exciting natural resources around us. It helps users explore the natural world using high-quality sound and media, and interact using feedback and push notifications. 
• Maserati: This app allows you to explore the world of Maserati cars. You can experience high sound quality and visuals of cars. Furthermore, car lovers can get to the deepest details available of the models. 

Catalogs 

Using the mag+ app, those boring and detailed catalogs can be made a lot more engaging and interactive to the users. You can add features like multimedia, web links, hotspots, and whatnot, to create a highly competitive and productive catalog. Use mag+ to design highly informative and attractive digital catalogs. Some of the prestigious clients of mag+ publishing catalogs are: 

• Siemens: It is a German catalog app that helps in creatively listing product specifications. 

Internal communications

Maintain an instant connection with your employees. Publish the activities, strengths, and success of your organization. These apps can be customized and made up-to-date using the proven features of mag+, like slideshows, web links, and image galleries. mag+ has expertise in publishing the following categories of internal communications: 

• Mobile newsletters: Overhaul the communication program with an internally distributed mobile newsletter. Use interactive elements of mag+ to make it more attractive. 
• Employee communications: Allow easy access to your employees. Send them daily reports and necessary information to their handsets. 
• Training manuals: Make the training process more exciting. Embed the features like feedback and quizzes. Just one touch opens a world of learning. 
• Annual reports: Raise the standard of your annual reports and make them more engaging using a plethora of mag+ features. 

Some of the prestigious clients of mag+ publishing internal communications are: 

• United Nations: This app highlights the impact of outlined activities and achievements of the United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG) using beautiful layouts, videos, and jump links. 
• Ford: Using mag+, Ford has created an interactive app to let its team members be informed about the wide range of products. 

Universities 

Using the mag+ app, you can instantly share information regarding results, scores, and admissions on campus through different types of university magazines. It results in a well-informed community of students, teachers, and administration. Such content can be easily highlighted using pop-ups, media files, navigations, and push notifications. mag+ has expertise in publishing the following categories of university content: 

• Alumni magazine: Instantly connect with the alumni of your university. Showcase the events, achievements, and future scope and make a network of well-informed and contributing alumni.
• Admission brochures: Reach out to prospective students. Add maps, forms, and campus news using rich media. 
• University athletics: Create a connection using mobile devices amongst the athletics community. 
• Student portfolios: mag+ helps you in designing inexpensive and impacting portfolios. 

Some of the prestigious clients of mag+ publishing university content are: 

• University of Arizona: Using mag+, the university has managed to update and inform its students and alumni. The attractive elements help in exploring events and activities. 
• University of Missouri: This app lets university alumni connect with the campus’ sports rivalry. It showcases historical visual records and lets users connect on the go. 

Agencies

Agencies can create comprehensive apps using mag+ to highlight characteristics like achievements, completed projects and future perspectives to keep the audience well informed and captivating, further strengthen the app using multimedia, overlays, pop-ups, navigations, and animations. Some of the prestigious clients of mag+ publishing agency content are:

• McMurry/TMG: It is one of the largest content marketing agencies. Their content creation using mag+ helped them reach potential clients such as WebMD and PetSmart. 
• CGI Interactive: It is a leading digital presentation agency. It is one of the early adopters of mag+ and creates apps for companies like EMC.

From content creation to publishing, mag+ provides all advanced tools and features for you to launch your next digital magazine, eBook, sales and marketing collaterals, and other digital publications. Our highly skilled team can guide you and help you launch your mag+ content app within a few seconds. Find your place in the mag+ sphere today. For more details, reach out to us!

Technology is rapidly changing the way we perform tasks and handle information. Like any other industry, technology has a profound impact on digital publishing as well. We have come a long way from the time the first e-book and e-paper were published. Since Apple published its first iPad in 2010, the perception of digital publication has changed immensely. In today’s mobile era, technology plays a crucial role in providing outstanding publishing and reading experience.  

The relationship between the author and the reader is changing like never before. All the aspects of the complete publishing value chain are evolving at a rapid pace. From the way we publish, deliver, and distribute information to the way we retrieve it, every aspect is improving continuously. Let us look at how technology is affecting digital publishing in a broader sense.  

Mobility 
With the advent of mobile devices, it has become a lot easier to access instant information at the user’s convenience. Gone are those days when people could not check their emails while traveling, waiting to watch their favorite series and get the latest updates of a football match on the go. With more and more users relying on mobile devices, digital content has become more mobile-friendly. Following the trend, authors are designing attractive and responsive content to be accessed anywhere anytime.  

Emergence of apps 
The publishing industry has prioritized the need to remain connected to their user base. Daily, thousands of apps are launched on the major app platforms. Keeping up with the trend and huge competition, more innovative and engaging apps are being extensively published. These apps are based on providing efficient solutions to the user’s needs. Users are continuously on the look for valuable and informative content within their comfort zone.  

Improved user-experience 
Easy usability and better readability are the primary concerns of the publisher to build their readership. This can be achieved only by delivering a great user interface, which is enhanced by making the content adaptable to a variety of platforms and by designing more responsive and dynamic pages. The digital content effortlessly adapts itself to the user’s device with a quicker page-load speed. Other elements like images, pop-ups, ads, and others facilitate a seamless reading experience.  

Quality content 
With the ever-increasing instances of click-bait and fake content online, the need for delivering quality content is highly increasing. Authors assure their readers of a worthwhile reading experience.  

To be distinguished and accepted as an authentic information source, it is essential to deliver genuine and informative content to the end-readers. Thus, maintaining quality is as important as delivering unique content.  

Engaging content 
With the decreasing attention span of Internet users, it has become significant to grab the attention of the target audience. Publishers are increasingly generating engaging and lively content for the longer retention of readers. Content is made more interactive with the use of multimedia. Usage of apt video and audio has become equally important as is delivering awesome content. 80% of the browsed content on Internet is in the form of video format. Also, audio is naturally engaging, for example, the ‘OK Google’ commands of Google Assistant.  

User-specific content 
Users are the key assets and the base of the publishing industry. Authors are more concerned about this fact than ever and are focusing on delivering user-specific content and connecting with them.  

Publishers are delivering personalized content to users as per their interests and priorities. This customized content is more likely to be consumed, appreciated, and shared. For example, in a news app, other than the general news compilation, user-customized segmentation focuses on the frequently read news category, city news, discussion feeds among the community, and other relevant information.  

Searchable content 
With the plethora of content available online, technology has given equal flexibility and power to everyone to reach the end-users. Thus, users have access to all types of data online. In such a case, publishers ensure the practice of making their content more discoverable and user-friendly by using optimization techniques. Hence, authors are striving hard to make their content searchable. Similarly, the readers are looking out for valuable content.  

Social media platforms 
The importance of social media platforms in business marketing is known to all. No more restricted to establishing family networks, these platforms have broadened their reach as robust marketing platforms for a wide range of industries. Industries have made a strong presence on social platforms. Be it product reviews, promotions, or discussions, social media platforms are the best way to reach out to worldwide consumers. It supports real-time interaction and emphasizes two-way conversation between the author and the reader. It also encourages instant feedback and advanced analytics.  

Augmented reality 
Augmented reality has been made possible only with the ongoing advances in technology. The publishers exploit this field by overlaying the digital information upon the existing physical surroundings. It enables the development of a dynamic environment, unlike previous static user interactions.  

The digital publishing industry has opened a world of new possibilities with undoubted potential.  

For example, MOTS Comic has delivered appealing comic content with augmented graphics and text with added musical score. It has helped in bringing the Comic to life. Similarly, for children, an app named Supersaurs has been introduced whereby the younger audience is exposed to the engaging environment where dinosaurs roar and roam around, which further assists in learning.   

Artificial intelligence  

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an accepted reality and not a buzzword anymore. It helps in setting preferences, content recommendation, ad selection, conversion optimization, and other such features. Overall, it provides the benefits of superior decisions and easy task achievement. Besides, the personalization of content assists in better analytics and unmatchable user experience. Smart algorithms are implemented that further do not require human skills and save manpower. For example, Google Assistant and Siri are applications of AI.  

Using voice commands, publications are made even more interactive. A reader can command to go to a particular page that he left last time; one can search for a particular topic simply by calling out or request to share an article with friends.   

Subscriptions 
With the advancement of the publishing industry, subscriptions are gaining popularity over digital ads as the freshest revenue generation method. This age-old method of monetization is again in trend to generate more revenues. Publishers are focusing on attracting and converting potential customers and retaining the existing ones with well-strategized subscription plans.  

Authors provide insight into their quality services and further persuade users to subscribe. For example, Audible, an Amazon company, is a great platform to listen to your books anytime and anywhere. They provide monthly subscriptions after 30 days of the free trial. These subscriptions have interestingly given a boost to the number of Audible users. Another such example is Netflix. It is popular worldwide for its unbeatable on-demand video streaming services. With every subscription, users can access a complete library of videos and movies.  

Wrapping it up, technology has had and continues to radically impact the digital publishing industry. Certainly, changes will always occur. What is important is to be aware of them, gear up, and adapt accordingly. With all these changes, only the delivery method has evolved. The main aim is still the generation of informative and quality content as per the readers’ interests. Thus, success is achieved by delivering the right content using the right methods at the right time. To explore more possibilities regarding digital publishing, please contact us today! 

A magazine app has transformed per se in the midst of rising technology, signifying the transition from print to digital publishing that has unveiled a plethora of advanced ways to design and publish content on mobile and web applications. When thinking of creating a digital magazine, publishers have lots of questions about where to start, what tool to use, how to distribute, and more. This blog will cover all of those points and prepare you for the next step toward becoming a digital publisher.

At first, the easiest and most inexpensive solution to creating a digital magazine was to convert a PDF into a digital version. However, the drawback to using PDF is the fixed layout, which makes it difficult for users to read the PDF on a mobile device; it usually requires zooming in and panning around. Furthermore, a PDF magazine requires users to download it before viewing¾it almost feels like an alien task.

In the mobile-first age, most people don’t want to spend much on something that’s not responsive to their devices. Today more people spend time on their phones, tablets, and other personal smart devices than it was at any other time in history. Unlike the traditional times, today’s software can help you create a magazine app or so-called native app. Thus arises the question “Which is better Android or iOS?”

In terms of the sheer number of devices, Android stands out on both tablets and phones irrespective of the fact that people tend to spend more money on iOS and Apple. There’s a massive global market share led by Android over iOS. According to a study, Android holds 72.2% of the global market share against iOS’ 26.99%.

Publishing an Android Mag+ App

To publish a standalone magazine app for Google Play, there are two things to consider: the app and the issues. Creating a Google Play app is similar to creating an iOS app. There are images to customize and store, and developer settings to enter. You need a Google Play Developer account. There is no charge from Mag+ as long as it is the same app, which is published through your same Publish portal. Just search for the Android-related articles on our support site and walk through the Android support articles there or contact us and we can do it for you.

Note that the magazine app will look and feel a little different from your iOS app. These are two different operating systems, just like Mac and Windows—they do mostly similar things but each has its flavor. Don’t fight it. Trust that the UI for the Android app has been developed with Android and UI best practices, and will make sense to Android users, even if you as an iOS user find it confusing at first.

Creating your issues for Android is also pretty simple. Even though the mag+DesignD paradigm is to create issues sized specifically for the device they will be published on, that’s not realistic given that there are thousands of Android devices out there. So instead, a mag+ powered magazine app intelligently scales one issue size—specifically 1280×800—to fit any Android device with no visible resolution loss even on higher-res devices.

Why not publish the same iOS MIB to Android? Well, you can do that and the issue will be served to Android devices, but we recommend using our simple Multi-Device Export feature to just port your design over to the Android 1280×800 template and do some basic tweaking. Because Android devices tend to have a different aspect ratio than iOS devices: they’re often taller and less square, so you’ll get less letterboxing with a dedicated issue in that aspect ratio.

Getting your magazine app on top of the store

When creating an issue, you can make complete use of modern interactivities to keep your readers engaged throughout their experience. Since the experience would be new to them, you’d also need to guide your new customers through your new magazine app. Running a full-fledged magazine app involves procedures other than issue designing, such as app submission, app optimization, app updation, and user behavior tracking. And the benefit of partnering with Mag+ is that your team doesn’t have to worry about the technicalities surrounding these procedures, specifically app creation and submission to Google Play Store. Our highly skilled backend team tackles all such tasks, allowing you to take enough time to create issues with our Adobe InDesign plug-in, mag+DesignD.

Optimizing a magazine app means selecting the right app category, naming the app, using a catchy app icon, search engine optimizing your app (for increasing the app’s ranking and visibility), and more. The overall aim is to get your magazine app on top of the Google Play Store, surpassing your competition, and attract potential customers that may become permanent subscribers to your magazine app. Once a customer downloads your app, the ball is in your court. Mostly, publishers recommend putting some free content in their magazine apps to catch the interest of new customers. People love free products, and sharing free content is a common content marketing strategy that big brands execute to entice their customers.

There’s a probability that your magazine app users can become your brand’s mouthpiece if they start liking the content you push on a quarterly, weekly, or monthly basis—depending on your frequency of publishing content. To unlock this massive benefit, you’d need to integrate social sharing functionalities. Through such options, the user can post your content on his/her social media accounts, thereby sharing quality content with his/her friends to bring you more eyeballs from prospective users.

Monetizing your magazine app

Now that you’ve got your magazine app on users’ Android devices, how about generating some additional revenue for your business? You can monetize your mag+ powered apps using advertising and sponsorship to increase your credibility and reliability in the market and eventually establish yourself as a reputable brand. With free mag+ tools, you can create custom ads for mag+ publications and export their MIB file to include in the issue. One can also create HTML ads, and to do so you’d have to add an HTML object to your layout.

I hope this article answered a few basic questions about exploring the Android world. You can find a lot more information on our support site and in other blog posts. For more information about Android digital publishing with Mag+, please reach out to us today!

Content creation is heavily tied to your brand building and growth. To win the trust of online readers is a matter of good communication. Get these persuasive ways to convey to the audience the benefits of trusting your business. 

What?! I want people to BUY my issues and subscriptions. Why would I give away my content? 

Because that’s the way you get people to buy more. It’s no longer a theory: the app marketplace runs on the freemium model. A recently updated study stated that the biggest chunk (48.2%) of all app revenue comes from in-app purchases, while paid app revenue comes second with 37.8% of the total. This suggests that free apps with paid in-app purchases are the whales in the app market industry, likely to stay here or increase more.

To drive those in-app purchases, content creation apps, in particular, need free samples. If you’re selling a flashlight app, people know what they’re buying. But for content creation apps, even if users trust your brand, they need to see what you’re delivering before they know if it’s worth the money. But don’t take the word for it: Test some of the strategies below and see how they affect your in-app purchase conversion. 

1. Highlight free, frequent content
Before we talk about how to give away issues, don’t forget about the other content creation channels you have in a Mag+ app: the Live window for web content creation, the Newsfeed for short, frequent content creation, and push alerts for real-time notifications. Use some combination of these to create value for your app, even for those who have not made a purchase, and you will develop an engaged audience for when you push paid content out. Use RSS feeds or existing assets to automate these channels, so they don’t become a resource drain. 

2. Include an issue with the app
The ‘inclusive issue’ feature allows you to automatically entitle an issue—free or paid—to all first-time app users. You can choose which issue the customer gets and change it at any time without updating the app (you’ll find the setting in Publish under Apps > Live Settings). As of v5.0, users will get a popup dialog box when they first open the app, letting them know they are entitled to a ‘free’ issue and asking if they would like to download it. The text that appears in the popup message can be customized in the app’s Application Texts, available in the customization options within the Mag+ Publish portal. Try making a back issue free or creating an overview sample issue. 

3. Use the store previews
Tap an issue in the in-app library and you will see a near-full screen preview of at least the cover. But in the plug-in, there is an option you can check called ‘Include in Issue Preview’. If this is checked, the system will include an image of the top screen of that vertical as an additional preview image for that article; users can swipe through them like a slideshow. Regardless of your other “free content” strategies, you should take advantage of this feature and include at least a few verticals in every issue preview.

4. Build and publish a preview issue
Some of our customers choose to create a free issue with a sampling of content as a teaser for a paid issue. These publishers also typically put a hot-linked badge on each page that says “Preview Issue: Tap here to buy the full issue”. Here’s how to do that: 

• Open each of the InDesign documents for the verticals you’d like to include in the Preview issue, and add the badge however you’d like to design it. Here’s how to create a hotspot that automatically takes the user to the in-app store. 
• Save that vertical as a new document, and export it to a new issue folder. Repeat for all verticals 
• Open the production tool and point to your Preview Issue folder. Create an MIB for that issue. 
• Upload to Publish as a new issue and check the Free Issue button. 

An ancillary benefit of this approach is that you can sell the Preview issue to a sponsor, and you’ll get many more eyeballs because it’s free. (If you don’t want your issue library getting cluttered with old sample issues, just contact support, and we can delete old ones for you.)

5. Offer a trial subscription
If you sell a subscription dependent on Apple and services, you can offer a free introductory trial period with an auto-renewable subscription. In-App Store Connect, under My Apps, select your app, then click Subscriptions shown in the sidebar under Features. You’ll be prompted to select and add the durations for each subscription. You’d need to use StoreKit to display these offers on your app’s subscription sign-up screen. When users hit the subscribe button, the trial period will begin, and they will not be charged. However, the trial will automatically ‘renew’ into a paid subscription at the end of the trial period unless the user turns off auto-renew for that subscription. Don’t forget to call attention to the trial using an in-app banner. 

6. Give away an issue with sign-in
Using Mag+ Access Control, you can add a sign-in window to your app and gate content behind that sign-in. The window is a web view, so you have full control over what’s presented there, and you manage the entitlements for your users. That means you can easily offer users the option to create an account with you in that window—gathering valuable information—in exchange for a free issue or trial period. Just don’t link back to a sales page on your Web site, or you’ll run afoul of Apple rules. 

People prefer doing business with people they like and trust. This is the much-quoted piece of doing business. In this context, the best way publishers can build trust is by giving away not just free content but the best content for free. It’s quite similar to “try before you buy”, and offering a sample of the best in-store is an attractive and money-making strategy. While these are some unique ways to attract and convert your audiences into permanent subscribers, do you have some in your mind too? Share in the comment below. Build your magazine from scratch, from content creation to publishing your digital magazine. If you want to capitalize on these and other new business tips, contact us today!  

One of the things you hear a lot from people about digital magazine apps is “if you have to tell me how to use it, you’ve already failed”. On the contrary, the gameplay instructions for Candy Crush or Angry Birds didn’t make them fail. Consuming content on a touchscreen canvas is an entirely new world, new interface, and new paradigm. There is absolutely nothing wrong with telling people how to use your app. If you don’t, you’re driving people away by making them feel stupid. People would much rather be reassured that they do know how to use an app than feel dumb because they don’t instinctively know everything about your app. That isn’t an excuse for a bad User Interface (UI), but no matter how simple your app is, it’s unlikely every user will just get it. 

This suggests that easy navigation is an important part of your magazine apps. It’s the way your users discover and interact with the content. It’s the UI patterns for navigation that make a good, enjoyable user experience. Nonetheless, a good UI could possibly make your apps appear more dynamic. Having a dynamic nature showcased through your app is an effective way to present your users with the most useful and helpful information at the right time. It all boils down to the good use of interactivities, multimedia, buttons, and other navigational shortcuts, which create a simple yet engaging UI capable of guiding the users through your magazine apps. Let’s explore ways to usher the user through your new magazine app.

Five ways to guide app users

Here are five things we recommend every magazine app should have: 

Embed a help page in your app:  

Mag+ apps make this easy with a dedicated menu item for it (which is optional, in case you are in the “no help page” camp). Make it clean and simple. Establish a clear set of icons. Highlight the basic gestures. Whatever you do in that space, you can even choose to have the app open directly into it (under Build Options in your App settings). But that’s not the only place for a help guide. You can use the overlay layer to have a persistent help icon sit on top of your issue that can bring up a popup how-to graphic or jump to a help page. You can also use the in-app messaging capability to pop up a how-to graphic the first time a user opens the app or opens an issue. For unique help pages, you can add videos to each issue to make unique help pages. 

Use arrows and directions:

Don’t be afraid to nudge your users in the issue with arrows and directions—don’t assume people will know to swipe or tap. Particularly in the first few pages of a document or issue, make the icons clear and visible—they can get more subtle as you get into the issue. You can even use the slideshow feature to create a subtle animation on the icons, like a bouncing or glowing effect.  

Add an FAQ to your help section:

FAQs can help you respond to the needs or solve the queries of your users more quickly, precisely, and appropriately. FAQs are an effective resource to educate, inform, and guide the users through your app and its features. You can have an FAQ page or hub at the bottom of the embedded help page in your magazine app.  

Custom feedback form

Adding a custom feedback form directly in the app is an even more seamless tool to help your users – you can reply directly to users by email or even push messages. An easier way to get up and running is to make a form in Google Drive and easily track the responses by receiving them in a Google Drive spreadsheet. Or, you could simply find some sample code online and drop it in your layout as an embedded HTML element.   

Add a pre-populated email link:

Finally, if none of your embedded resources are enough—or if a user just doesn’t like to read instructions—provide plenty of easy mechanisms for them to contact you. The simplest way to do that is to put a pre-populated email link, which will directly open an email window on top of the page. When the user hits Send or Cancel, it will return them to the screen in the app that they were reading. They do not have to leave your Mag+ app.  

An email link is a way for your users to directly connect with you over an issue. You can even put these links on any house ads, or add it to your footer. While you’re at it, link to your Facebook and Twitter accounts too. Give them every possible outlet for getting ahold of you. 

Of course, it’s crucial that all these help channels be manned for quick replies, which can sometimes be a challenge for self-publishers. If you don’t have a dedicated customer service department, draw up a list of common replies and split the duty among your team, each person taking a week. It’s a great way for everyone to get into the minds of your audience. 

Conclusion

As a magazine publisher, your job is to help the users get a smooth customer journey from start to finish. Mag+, as a vendor to your publishing needs, our job is to simplify the interface design – the responsibility of our backend team – so that the end users have hassle-free access to solutions to their challenges. 

So, have you seen or marked any help pages you like? Do you have other ideas for guiding users through the magazine apps? Share them with us in the comments below. For more information about an effective flow of help/guides, contact us today!

Digital magazines are a great platform for online publication that can elevate your branding. Today, more and more brands leverage digital magazines to attract users—even onlookers, and increase engagement for business benefits. Consequently, online readership has also increased exponentially in the past few years. And it is the right time for you to start publishing online magazines, or preferably magazine apps for captivating the readers.

A digital magazine is a front-end product of your brand. It lets you communicate with a wider audience. Thus, it’s imperative for magazines to be capable of attracting and holding their interest. There are no shortcuts when choosing the right medium for digital publishing. To consistently stand out from the rest, you should rely on an expert in providing valuable, interactive, and thoughtful publishing services. 

mag+ is a seasoned app publishing platform. Being the pioneer in digital magazine publishing, it can efficiently cater to your requirements. Using mag+, one can publish a highly interactive digital magazine across various platforms and a variety of devices, such as Android and iOS. It also lets publishers —even non-publishers—deliver a hyper-personalized digital experience to their audiences. One doesn’t require coding and technical know-how when designing with mag+. 

The company has considerable expertise in publishing magazines ranging from consumer magazines and member magazines to trading magazines. It has recently added 15+ new features to its legacy product, mag+DesignD, which ensures that modern challenges of publishers are simplified. Its newly-optimized product, called mag+Now, is quite a pliable platform that allows creation and dissemination of interactive magazines solely through the platform. 

Know more about mag+ and the range of advanced features it provides you to create digital magazines.

Reasons to create digital magazine with mag+

Free tools: mag+ provides you with free authoring tools with integrated digital asset management (DAM) system to unleash your creativity and create high-quality personalized designs. The DAM stores all media assets that your editorial team members can freely access to transfer images, videos, or audio at the right time during content creation. 

Engaging and interactive: Feature-rich mag+ tools allow you to incorporate uncountable interactivities in digital magazines. You can embed audio, images, video, animations, popups, hotspots, and slideshows into your app. That’s not all, you can also add a 360-degree view, push notifications, feedback forms, and easy scrolling. It helps to create easily ‘navigable’ pages embedded with web links and jump links, which is inevitable to create a hyper-personalized experience for your users.

No coding skills required: To publish your digital magazine, you need not have any programming expertise. Just relax and leave everything to mag+.  Its backend team will help publish creations to your branded apps every time you update or create something new.

Quick and easy: Publishing your digital magazine with mag+ is as simple as clicking a button. As soon as you add your designs to the mag+ Publish Portal, you can publish them on your website and branded app. mag+ makes your designs fully responsive and adaptable to all smart screen sizes, such as iPhones, iPad, Android smartphones, and Amazon Kindle Fire, in a single click.

Branded Apps: You can create your own updated branded app using our ready-made app. This way you’ll be relieved from developing an app from scratch. You can simply use your brand logo on the ready-made app to own it.

Supported platforms: mag+ supports publishing branded magazine apps to all the major app stores like Android’s Google Play, Apple’s App Store, and Amazon App Store. From the app’s creation to its submission to app stores, mag+ offers to tackle all that!

Instant design review: Get a sense of your app in real-time using the mag+ Reviewer app. Before making your app live, you can test your app to provide an unexceptional user experience. 

Multi-device export: Take advantage of this advanced feature of mag+ and save a lot of time. It allows you to design a layout once and then automatically transfer it to other desirable layouts;this means that now you don’t have to re-create the same design to fit the layout or even the orientation of different devices. This also means that your users can easily access your digital magazine on their desired devices.

Support services: In addition to comprehensive online support resources, mag+ is always eager to extend consulting and support services. Not limiting to simply publishing your app, mag+ also extends support that gets you an edge over others. It gives you the freedom to update content, use advertisements, send live feeds, or push notifications at desired intervals. Whether you’re a programmer or a non-programmer, everything from creation to publication to updation is efficiently handled. 

Monetization: Your monetization needs are taken care of by mag+. It supports advertising, subscription, in-app purchasing, and promotional activities. Since mag+ tools are free to download, you can give ad space in magazines and create custom ads to showcase opportunities dynamically for higher engagement.

Analytics: Exhaustive analytical results are generated specifically for your app. Using these services, you can observe the behavior of your users and monitor the app usage closely. The metrics can further help you with changing the feel, look, and tone of your magazine app, and make the experience more personalized for your readers.

Wider customer base: This is something we boast about. Your audiences living in the modern world easily get to know about your brand in different ways. The offered tools and features enable you to use dynamic content in digital magazines or magazine apps. It creates a more user-friendly, personal experience for your customers, which helps to engage current readers and attract potential new customers. It helps advance the user interface (UI) with layered content, interactivities, and a responsive design layout—the elements that make magazines dynamic. 

Conclusion 

Your digital magazine will help you connect better with your targeted audience globally. Contact your readers more often and keep them updated with the latest news and recent trends. With mag+ platforms, you can instantly start creating content using numerous additional features. You can efficiently use well-defined templates, multiple orientations, clean layouts, HTML compatibility, an interactive table of contents, and others. 

So, don’t wait and start publishing your digital magazine with mag+. Relying on us, you can enjoy end results and explore hidden opportunities. Sign up for free to experience our exceptional digital publishing services. 

Are you inquisitive to know what magazine apps are all about? Or how a magazine app enriches your reading experience? We’ve got you covered so come, let’s explore.

The digital era has witnessed a rapid migration of print magazine readers to the magazine app exclusively. Many—if not most—magazine readers who read content frequently trust apps for easy consumption and access benefits. Such an app contains issues that publishers create and distribute periodically to keep their readers engaged and feed their interests. The app gets enriched every time a new issue is published.  

Depending upon one’s interest or desire, a magazine app may be based on any genre like sports, fashion, news, or a customized app altogether. For example, Flipboard is a famous magazine app for providing personalized content. It allows publishers to collect relevant articles, images, videos, and other content as per their readers’ interests and priorities and create a completely customized magazine experience. 

Advantages of a magazine app 

Easy distribution and access 

A magazine app is quickly distributed and accessed over the internet to multiple platforms and devices irrespective of geographical boundaries. It becomes hassle-free for both the readers and publishers as they can achieve their respective tasks according to their comfort. Launching a magazine app in various app stores increases the reach to the audience and leads to more visibility and brand recognition in the market.

Instant connection 

App publishers remain constantly in touch with their readers by sending the latest updates, trends, news, and much more. Notifications sent at the right time greatly help in being visible to the reader and encourage app usage. Other communication options like surveys and feedback allow the reader and publisher to react instantly to each other.

Engaging 

Content is made more engaging by using rich multimedia features like audio, images, and video. Other features include simple navigation, slideshows, web links, clear layouts, graphs, tables, 360-degree view, pinch and zoom, and others. While decreasing human attention span, these quick controls on fingertips help readers with the interactive flow of consumption. As a result, the app traffic increases and also attracts potential customers. 

Revenue generation 

Publishers follow monetization techniques for their apps to generate profits. Some of the revenue generation methods include in-app purchases, subscriptions, ads, and others. Another strategy, often called ‘freemium’ includes a perfect combination of free and paid services, where a reader is offered free articles or chapters to preview the content and is attracted to continue consumption on paying the subscription charges.

Offline library 

Sometimes readers are unable to access the online pages, or the process is much delayed due to poor or no connection at all. The offline library comes to the rescue in such times. One can download the desired monthly or weekly issue beforehand and save it in an offline library. Thereafter the reader can access these articles anytime at their convenience. 

This suggests that publishers choosing a magazine app to increase readership can get an edge over competitors. While an app may seem expensive and challenging to leverage without techie mates, that’s not the case today. Publishers now have a choice to pick ready-made apps or so-called white-label apps. A ready-made app can prevent them from developing an app from scratch. The publisher can simply use its brand logo on the pre-built app to own it and push content directly on their readers’ smart devices.

Let’s explore how publishers can use a ready-made magazine app to share desired content with their customers.

How to run a magazine app? 

With the off-the-shelf app, publishers no longer require programmers to develop and run an app. This means publishers can simply begin with the content creation process, using magazine software from a vendor that offers to handle all technical aspects of app development and submission to app stores. In a nutshell, all they have to do initially is create content and sit back while the creation is pushed to their live app.  

Here’s an overview of how publishers can kick off their branding using a magazine app while also enriching the experience for their readers: 
 
Step 1: Interactive content development 

The app content is designed to provide a seamless user experience by optimizing the look and feel of the product by adopting the following tactics:  

• HTML5 fully-responsive design to adapt to the user device. 
• Jump links, page-flipping, or scroll-down options to enable faster and clear navigation through the issue’s pages. 
• Integration of more engaging and interactive content to gain and retain the audience. 
• Categorization of the content into categories like the special edition, reports, and so on to make the content easily searchable. 
• Native device features are appropriately utilized to enhance the functionalities. 
• Automatic switching of the orientation from landscape to portrait or vice-versa. 
• Optimized page load speeds for faster downloads and refresh.  

Step 2: Content distribution  

The app is then submitted to various app stores. Once the app is live, publishers can start pushing created content to the app on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. This can be broadcasted to all app readers or targeted readers in the form of separate issues. A publisher can also send timely alerts and notifications to inform their customers about new, upcoming issues as part of a marketing plan. 

Step 3: App optimization  
The app is on an App store, and now it’s time to increase its visibility. There are several ways to make apps discoverable in the app stores, which can help place the app at a higher rank on the App store. Once the app is downloaded, a reader can instantly start consuming the content or save it in the app library to read later as and when desired. Readers further have the option to bookmark their favorite articles or delete the articles read. 

Step 4: Social sharing  

The magazine app further allows sharing of the content amongst your community or family on social networks and other platforms. This can help publishers increase brand awareness and unlock untapped potential. Also, the reader can directly communicate with the publisher using comments, feedback, and others.

Step 5: User behavior tracking 
A publisher of a magazine app has the advantage that it can track the in-app behavior and other required analytics of the readers. This helps the publishers to find the weaker areas and allows them to improve their brand services. 

Conclusion 

To conclude, with the increasing population consuming mobile content, a magazine app helps to reach more customers and provide them with valuable content. It helps in increasing brand awareness, marketing, consumer base, and credibility.

If you’re wondering about a magazine app for your business, Magplus could be the best partner. mag+Now, a newly launched content-reader app, allows publishers to create engaging content with in-built authoring tools and features. This tool offers to develop fully-responsive content that can be published to multiple channels, such as Android and iOS devices, with a single click.  

Most importantly, you’d be relieved from app development and submission steps. Our team would design a perfect app with the help of your insights. From alerts to subscriptions to ads, you’ll be able to run a full-fledged app within a few seconds. To know more about the ease of creation of a branded app, contact us today!