Our Work
Delivering your vision
The World In mobile app
Improving content management experience
The Economist is a weekly newspaper owned by The Economist Group offering insight and opinion on international news, politics, business, finance, science, technology and the connections between them. We worked with them to import content straight from their print platform and vastly improve the content management experience.
The Challenge
The Economist’s annual collection of forecasts identifies and explores the worlds of politics, business, science and the arts. The latest app provides digital access to the full content of the print edition of the newspaper. In order to achieve speed and control, the editorial team was in need of a content management system that allowed them to independently make changes. The CMS system needed to be updated and rebuilt quickly. With limited time and internal resources tied up, The Economist needed to find someone with Drupal expertise that really understood publishing.
The Solution
We helped The Economist rebuild their site using Drupal 7, automatically import content from Adobe InDesign and achieve greater speed and control over content for their digital product. Our implementation of Drupal 7 has improved and simplified the user experience, making it slicker and simpler.
The ability to import content from Adobe InDesign has vastly reduced the content production time, removing the need for time-consuming manual work. Advanced validation prior to to import reduces the scope for human error, ensuring that the content imports perfectly each time. Once imported, the content can be quickly tweaked by the editorial team. Web previews of how the content will be displayed in the app make the feedback process instantaneous.
URL: http://www.economist.com/world-in-2015-app
The Economist
Yvonne Ryan, Managing Editor
"All aspects of the project were discussed openly in order to deliver precise solutions. C&W were able to understand the needs of the project quickly and scope it out accordingly; there was open communication between all parties; project management was spot on; we always knew where we were on the timeline and there was thorough budget tracking throughout."
The Key Benefits
For editors, having in-house control of the content management system has transformed the workflow process. For the first time, The Economist was able to provide access to The World In digital content before the print product was released. There were 70,000 downloads within the first two months of launch on both iOS and android devices. Giving editors the ability to add content and make amendments has freed time for more elaborate, dynamic and interactive focus on digital appearance and user experience.
- Automatic content import saves time and increases accuracy
- Improved editorial experience reduces content creation time
- Web preview of app content reduces feedback cycle time
