Launches

The Scotsman app relaunches on Bolt with lots of cool custom work

From custom dynamic timelines to a dedicated video timeline and digital editions, read more about the work we did for National World title, The Scotsman.

25th July 2023

Here at Pugpig, we love working closely with our existing customers just as much as we love launching new apps. We’re committed to continuously improving the mobile apps of all our customers – not only aligning with their strategy, but with the evolving landscape of the wider industry too.

We’ve worked with National World (formerly jpimedia) since 2019, and The Scotsman is one of 13 titles powered by Pugpig. In early summer, they came to us with a tight deadline to revamp their app with a brand new layout and lots more features and we couldn’t wait to get stuck in.

In just eight weeks, we transformed The Scotsman’s mobile app from our standard out-of-the-box framework with simple chronological feeds into a highly custom app complete with dynamic timelines, video, and lots of custom styling.

Here’s what we did…

Let’s take a look at the ‘home’ timeline first. Team Pugpig built a custom timeline which was curated from an amalgamation of all timelines on the app, essentially stitching multiple timelines together, from opinion and politics to sport and culture. These dynamic timelines can be either manually or automatically curated based on editorial needs.

We worked really closely with The Scotsman team to make sure their news feeds flowed seamlessly from their CMS into the app, taking into account curation requirements too. Each content timeline has a gridlike layout, making for a deeply engaging browsing experience and features story carousels to highlight standout articles.

The app also features a timeline dedicated to video, accessed in the main navigation bar and curated to include only articles that have a video tied to them. The videos aren’t viewed directly from the timeline, rather by clicking into the associated article.

Alongside custom content timelines, the app has a ‘newspaper’ section where users can access PDF rendered digital editions of the daily newspaper and supplements.

Working with The Scotsman

We hugely enjoyed working collaboratively with The Scotsman team, particularly the editorial team who had specific requirements relating back to their content feeds and workflow.

We’re excited to continue our close relationship with National World and look forward to even more exciting revamp projects for some of their other titles in the near future.

Sam Forrest, Director of Digital Product at National World said:

“Having worked with Pugpig for a number of years, it’s clear their capabilities and feature set has moved on significantly since we first successfully launched our subscription-based apps on their platform.

“Starting with The Scotsman, we’ve taken the step to push towards a much improved UI/UX experience coupled with a cross-platform editorial strategy to make our apps a richer value proposition for our customers.

“As ever, the team at Pugpig worked at a breakneck pace to ensure we could hit the date required. We’re working together on new features and upcoming launches and their expertise, enthusiasm and unflappable demeanor continues to give us the confidence that we have grown accustomed to.”

Dominic Easter, Customer Director at Pugpig says:

“We’ve really enjoyed working with National World over the years, it’s fantastic to see them using Pugpig Bolt and all its capabilities to invest in building premium mobile apps to engage their most loyal audience across some of their top titles.”