How MobiLoud Helped Pharmaceutical Journal Stay Cutting Edge as a Non-Profit Publisher

Publishers like The Pharmaceutical Journal have unique challenges to face. There’s the need to keep up with consumers’ demand for digital-first products, and having to do so with minimal technical and financial resources.

For more than ten years, they were trying to keep their head above water with a custom-built app that was expensive, difficult to maintain and didn’t give them full ownership of their content.

Recently they switched to MobiLoud, and realized that they could put out a high-quality, professional product for less effort and resource allocation. Read on to learn more about their journey.

What They Needed From a Mobile App

The Pharmaceutical Journal is the official journal of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, a professional leadership body for pharmacists in Great Britain. The site produces news content, research and learning material for their members.

The journal had been running a print version since 1841, which was retired in 2001 as they embarked on a digital transformation journey - a quest to become a modern, digital-first publication.

Alongside the website, they had an app for some time, which was built and put out by a third party who would take PDFs of their web content, extract the content in XML format and put it into an app platform.

This publishing workflow was difficult to manage, as Director Tony Scully states:

“The first generation of the app was very resource and production intensive. We had very limited ability to be able to add value to the content in the app or even just to correct errors or make changes.”

“It was outside of our tech stack, so it was a bit disjointed and our production and editorial teams had no way to access that content.”

In 2019 they moved their site from a proprietary platform to WordPress, to simplify things and take more control over their content. They saw this as as an opportunity to migrate their app to a platform that was easier to work with and didn’t leave their user experience in the hands of a third party.

“While we have peculiarities as an organization, our problems aren’t unique. We produce content, we want to reach an audience, we want to have a good experience, we want to have access to our content and so my default position is to look for things that are as off the shelf as possible.”

The Unique Challenges for a Non-Profit Publisher

The Pharmaceutical Journal is a non-profit organization. They aim to deliver high-quality content and a great user experience, but have to do so with limited financial resources - as well as a tiny development team with no mobile app development expertise.

“The consumer, they'll subscribe to the New York Times for a dollar a month and get access to content being produced by a team of 1200 journalists and with a tech team of probably thousands as well. And here we are a team of 20-25 and I've got two people working on product, and we’ve got to be somewhat comparable to the product that organizations thousands of times bigger than us can produce.”

They weren’t sure if it was possible to provide a New York Times-level digital experience with such a limited budget, and the need to provide results for as little investment as possible.

How MobiLoud Made a Difference

Tony found MobiLoud, and found the cheat code to be able to offer an amazing app experience without a massive investment.

With MobiLoud, they got an app that was directly integrated with their WordPress site. Instead of a custom build separate to their website, MobiLoud allowed them to manage their app content through WordPress.

“What was very attractive about MobiLoud, one the confidence you have in working with WordPress, but also the cost model. We’re a not for profit organization, and MobiLoud had a very attractive pricing structure, fixed price and considerably lower cost than some of the proposals we received.”

Instead of an over-engineered, expensive app that was difficult to control, they got a simple app that achieved everything they needed, fit within their price constraints, and didn’t require additional dev work from their small technical team.

Initial Results

Tony’s team are putting the final touches on their rollout strategy, but have already seen positive results from their new app, most notably the difference their team notices in how they’re able to manage and control the app.

“We’re in soft launch currently, and I think a lot of the benefits with this app will be felt internally. That means being able to review and access and manage the user experience on the app in ways that previously with our legacy app we weren’t able to do. We were working through a third party and trying to make changes and it was just never possible.”

It’s also looking good from the test groups they’ve rolled the app out to. Their previous apps had a lot of issues, leading to a large number of negative reviews on the App Store and Google Play Store, but the new version has been much more user-friendly.

“We were able to get direct feedback from members in small samples and we had about 95% or 19 of 20 gave a positive response for accessibility and usability.”

Choose MobiLoud for Cost-Effective Native Apps

For non-profit organizations, as well as small and medium-sized businesses, building an app feels like a catch-22 situation.

You feel like you need to provide the same kind of experience people get from big brands’ apps in order to stay relevant. But doing so requires massive amounts of time and money, plus development expertise you don’t have.

MobiLoud is the perfect solution. You get an app that’s 95% of what you’d get with a custom build, yet you can manage it all from one codebase, saving you $500k+ and letting you manage and iterate on your app through your website.

“We’re looking for quality, however we’re a small organization, so to be able to produce something that our members value, as the size of organization that we are, and with the budgets that I have available, to me has been a real positive experience.”

If you want to get a professional-standard mobile app, for low cost, little effort and with minimal overhead, get in touch with us.

Use our free preview tool to get a look at what your app can look like, or schedule a free demo for a guided walk through the process of launching amazing native apps with MobiLoud.