Forbes is improving its mobile experience

Ross Benes of Digiday writes about how Forbes is boosting its mobile experience.

Benes writes, “The publisher is making headway, though. It rolled out a new mobile site in January — a so-called Progressive Web App backed by Google — that cut down the average amount of time it takes to render content to 2.5 seconds from 6.5. The PWA doesn’t feature intrusive interstitials or the homepage ad with a countdown timer. (On desktop, Forbes will keep the ad but get rid of the timer on Aug. 22.) The PWA is available to 25 percent of visitors and is expected to be available to all Forbes users by the end of the third quarter.

“Forbes said that among people who are using the PWA, impressions per session are 10 percent higher than those who are using the old mobile site.

“The PWA users spend up to 40 percent more time per session and view 15 percent more pages per session. Among that group, there also was a 20 percent decrease in the number of users who read less than one-fourth of an article, said Salah Zalatimo, head of product and tech at Forbes. Zalatimo wouldn’t provide raw numbers.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.