Financial Times' Mobile Site Broadens Readership to Morning and Evening Hours

Friday November 18, 2011 12:12 PM PST by Jordan Golson
The Financial Times' web app has drawn more than 1 million readers since June, growing by 300,000 readers since late September. However, the raw numbers don't tell the whole story.

In its press release about breaking the 1 million mark, the FT staff built an infographic with data from its mobile website. 20 percent of FT page views are from mobile devices, and 15 percent of its digital consumer subscriptions initiate on mobile, showing that the paper is having good luck attracting readers to its pricey business-focused readership.


But most revealing is this chart showing the distribution of readership broken out by time-of-day and whether readers were using a smartphone, tablet, or reading on a desktop. As a financial paper, this data reflects the behavior of a higher-income, white-collar readership.

Smartphone and tablet readership spikes in the morning, then drops as readers use their desktops to keep up with the news during the day, then tablet use rises in the evening as users commute and arrive home.

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incoherent1
103 months ago
The colors of the icons for smartphone and tablets are switched when you move from the icons to the graph. Presumably the dark red signifies smart phones in the graph (pink for tablet), although it's unclear given the confused icon colors.
Rating: 3 Votes
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BJB Productions
103 months ago
I don't use this app, but I find this to be pretty true for me. Phone in the morning; not a lot of time, so just whip it out. Computer during day/work hours, and then snuggle up with the iPad later at night.
Rating: 2 Votes
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coder12
103 months ago

The colors of the icons for smartphone and tablets are switched when you move from the icons to the graph. Presumably the dark red signifies smart phones in the graph (pink for tablet), although it's unclear given the confused icon colors.


No kidding.

Consistency. It's a good thing.
Rating: 1 Votes
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mrsir2009
103 months ago
Looks like people go on the website at work on their work desktops, and before & after work on their tablet or smartphone.
Rating: 1 Votes
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eenuuk
103 months ago
Wow, this makes the blog? Is this not common sense? I can't say those graphs,surprise me, if you'd ask me to draw you said graph that's what I'd have drawn, Mr Golson struggling for things to write.....
Rating: 1 Votes
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AmpSkillz
103 months ago

The colors of the icons for smartphone and tablets are switched when you move from the icons to the graph. Presumably the dark red signifies smart phones in the graph (pink for tablet), although it's unclear given the confused icon colors.

Desktop and tablet also have text which is the same color as the icon but smartphone has the same color text as tablet, so they were not just switched.The tablet icon looks like a large version of their smartphone icon. They actually used a different tablet graphic above this graph in the original uncropped version of this infographic. (Original (http://9to5mac.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/financial-times-web-app-usage-full-infographic.jpg))

My guess is that they were in a hurry and simply enlarged the smartphone icon for the tablet icon and and meant to recolor one of them, but recolored the wrong one and forgot the text.

I would like to know which color really goes with which device.

Assuming that coloring is the only mistake and that positioning on the graph is accurate, this is what it should look like.

Rating: 1 Votes
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50548
103 months ago

I don't use this app, but I find this to be pretty true for me. Phone in the morning; not a lot of time, so just whip it out. Computer during day/work hours, and then snuggle up with the iPad later at night.


Same here in terms of usage pattern, but I still REFUSE to use the web thingie devised by FT - as a subscriber, it was ridiculous to see them run away from Apple's rules and an award-winning app just to keep control over reader information.

Besides, the web app DOES have disadvantages compared to the normal application.
Rating: 0 Votes
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