Returning to the app

A user might be popping into your app several times throughout the day, or they might be binge-reading your whole magazine in the bath every Thursday night. Either way, we need to know what to do when somebody comes back.

How long is long enough?

We use time to determine what we should be showing a user. If a user returns within a certain threshold we’ll simply return them to where they were so they can carry on reading. However, there’s a strong chance that if a user doesn’t return for some time, when they do come back they’re looking for new content, in which case it doesn’t make sense to return them to their previous position.

This threshold time is configurable, with the default being 30 minutes. It can be set to a number of hours or days, though. This configuration should be based on the frequency of your publishing and your user’s reading habit. Daily newspapers, for example, would in most cases want to return the user to the storefront quite frequently. Publishers of long-tail reference material, though, might want to retain the user’s position for a much longer time.

Where should you go?

If a user hasn’t been in the app for a period exceeding the threshold mentioned above, we have a couple of options of where we can send them when they do eventually reopen the app. By default, we send them to the storefront which makes sense in 99% of cases. This is, however, overridden by the primary edition flag mentioned above. In this case, upon opening the app you’d find yourself on the first page of that edition.

Sticky editions

There are a couple of cases we've come across where one size simply won't fit all, and for those cases we've developed sticky editions. Once a user goes into a sticky edition they'll be returned to it every time they open the app. This is perfect for a continuous edition which is regularly refreshed with new content. Rather than having your users have to find this content every time they open the app we'll take them right to it.

This is best used in conjunction with another destination in the app, such as a storefront with regular editions. That way, users can find the type of content they prefer and be taken back to the right place every time the open your app.