Many mobile web readers turn to The Times when they have short windows of time to fill in between other tasks. Whether they do this to stay informed or just check in throughout the day, one common frustration is that there are few cues to help them manage that time effectively. As a result, many users are either interrupted in the middle of an article, or simply don’t consider The Times at all when trying to fill these idle moments.
Our solution was to calculate and surface approximate article read time along with the ability to save and access interesting Times articles quickly so users could read them at a more appropriate time.
Historically, save functionality on mobile was only available to our registered users and subscribers. By using local storage on the user’s device to save flagged stories, we were able to make this functionality available to non-registered readers.
Save limits baked into the functionality coupled with consistent, positive feedback encouraged readers to register over time in order to take advantage of unlimited saving as well as other cross-platform incentives provided to registered users.
