The Times and The Sunday Times launch new website and smartphone apps

Both newspapers move to an edition-based digital publishing model

The Times and The Sunday Times announce the launch of a new combined website and two upgraded smartphone apps that will follow an edition-based publishing model for the first time.

One core edition will be produced each day, on all platforms, with updates to the edition published at 9am, noon and 5pm on the website and smartphone apps. On weekends the edition updates will be at noon and 6pm.

The move from rolling news to an edition-based model is based on intensive customer research, which showed that readers come to The Times and The Sunday Times at set points of the day and read us primarily for the accuracy of our reporting, and the originality of our analysis and comment.

The new publishing times reflect the pattern of our readers’ daily routines and their desire for a curated, finite edition that will keep them fully informed in minimum time, with maximum flair. We retain the flexibility to follow a big breaking news story if the Editors believe it is warranted.

The new responsive website and apps have a cleaner, smarter design and a new font, Times Digital, to optimise the digital reading experience. Our sections will also be named consistently across all of our products for ease and simplicity.

The new website and Android app are live now, with the iOS app following within 24 hours.

John Witherow, Editor of The Times, said:

“The power of an edition has endured at The Times for more than 230 years. Our challenge is to update this concept for the digital age: to put readers first and cut through the babble.”

Martin Ivens, Editor of The Sunday Times, said:

“The Sunday Times remains Britain’s biggest-selling quality newspaper thanks to award-winning scoops from the FIFA scandal to blood doping in athletics. An edition-based digital format allows us to showcase the breadth of what we offer in a fresh way that is as easy to navigate and share as our precious print edition.”

For the 2015 financial year, ending June 2015, the average total paid sales volumes on The Times increased to 541,000 and to 953,000 for The Sunday Times, including digital subscriptions of 172,000 across seven days. Print subscriptions were 224,000. Dwell times on the tablet edition are 44 minutes for The Times and 64 minutes for The Sunday Times.

Print sales for The Times have continued to perform strongly through the year and in February 2016 The Times was the only national quality newspaper to grow its circulation year on year, by 3.5 per cent to 402,752.