145%
increase in commercial revenue from
2021 to 2023
68%
increase in readership year on year since moving to new format in March 2024
268%
increase in engagement year on year since moving to new format in March 2024
THE RESULTS
The Brief
River had to pivot from publishing a printed magazine to an online-only product by May 2020 because of the pandemic. Although online traffic had grown since then, there was also an understanding that how the audience accesses and consumes content had changed – in particular the shift from desktop to mobile. Therefore, a different solution was needed. River approached ICAS in summer 2023 with a proposal to take the magazine from page turner to a new format.
The Strategy
CA Magazine looked at solutions across the online publishing spectrum. In March 2024, the magazine moved from the page-turner format to Shorthand – a publishing system that has been used by big brands and famous institutions worldwide. In the page-turner format, readers tend to skim through pages – and it also requires readers to zoom in and out to read stories. We needed to make the product more user -friendly and accessible, bearing in mind that the age of members ranges from 18 to 80.
The Creative
In Shorthand we can deliver a much richer and more user-friendly content experience, producing more infographics and stats, which is ideal for an audience largely made up of accountants and finance professionals. Overall, the first issue in the new format delivered a 50% increase in visits compared with March 2023 and around a 60% increase on the average monthly number of visits in page turner, and has been our most successful issue since going online-only. Since moving to Shorthand, we’ve seen a significant increase in read times for individual stories.
