XO Group sees 50pc of readers on mobile following extensive transformation
NEW YORK ? The CEO of media company XO Group said at the MMA Mobile Marketing Leadership Forum that a drastic shift to appeal to mobile-first consumers resulted in a two-month retention for 50 percent of mobile readers for The Knot.
During the session, How Mobile is Springboarding The Knot into a Content-Drive Transactional Marketplace, the CEO recounted the difficulties in getting investors on board with the extreme measures taken to appeal to the new mobile-first reader. The publication group undertook a complete makeover of company departments that made the product the focal point, eventually transforming the business into a marketplace that addresses all of consumers' needs in regards to weddings, marriage and pregnancy.
"The overall audience for our products has gone up 27 percent in the last year, but The Knot app, which was not a great app when we started, has been rebuilt, relaunched and iterated on aggressively," said Mike Steib, CEO of XO Group. "The team did a really good job with the app.
"The team loves that they owned this product that they can use to serve the needs of our audience at these really important times," he said. "The stock originally went way down, and then we delivered good products and better user metrics and the revenue seemed to follow and things are great."
Mobile disruption
While mobile is the biggest disruptor in the media industry, it has done more than just shift consumers? needs in terms of technology but has changed what they are looking for in content as well. When Mr. Steib first joined XO Group, users were able to complete a wide range of activity on mobile, including ordering food and talking with friends, but planning something as big as a wedding still required a desktop experience.
The Knot's mobile app for wedding dress shopping
The Knot's mobile app for wedding dress shopping
As consumer behavior shifted to a place where content producers needed a mobile presence, XO Group focused on creating products with exceptional optimization and design, but also sought out to solve any pain points consumers have in planning their wedding or the birth of their child. Soon a variety of mobile properties for XO?s The Knot and The Bump were born, and transformed into a place where readers were not only reading content but completing actions as well.
XO Group's app for The Bump
XO Group's app for The Bump
For instance, publications in regards to weddings typically provide a wide range of content demonstrating what the experience is like to book a venue or a DJ, but lacked the capability for users to do so. Users of The Knot can garner a wide range of knowledge regarding planning their wedding, but can now also book and pay for all the vendors needed.
Tying the mobile knot
The Knot first provided the ability for consumers to book vendors that had partnered with XO Group to advertise their business, similar to the Yellow Pages. But XO Group quickly realized that this was not helpful to its readers.
Readers want to see all the possible vendors for their wedding, and so The Knot updated its strategy to make this happen on mobile. The Knot?s readers on mobile now make up 50 percent of readers, and The Bump now sees 76 percent on mobile.
"If you look at companies who have done an exceptional job with mobile experiences, they are organized differently," Mr. Steib said "Companies that do a really good job of serving their users with great digital products, they organize themselves around product-first.
"They have a product team that owns the products, and have accountability for revenue and accountability for the success of the user, but the organization sits in a really different place," he said. "They are structured in a different way.
"Now when we think about mobile experiences, we have a series of squads that own the mobile experiences with a product leader, a business partner here and an engineering team attached. It was a radical departure from the way we had been organized previously and was very disruptive."