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BBC Weather app reaches one million s

James Metcalfe

Head of Product, BBC+

Recently I wrote about the launch of the BBC Weather apps for Android and iOS and I’m delighted to announce the app has reached over one million s across both platforms within the first two weeks of launch.

It’s great to see such a positive response to the app and to reach this milestone in extra quick time. I wanted to take this opportunity to share some insights into how people have been using it so far, as we’ve already started to see a shift in BBC Weather mobile usage.

The BBC Weather app on different devices



For example, over 25% of people are now accessing our services via mobile, up from 20% prior to the apps launching.

In the first weekend following the app’s launch (15 and 16 June) we saw an approximate 47% increase in mobile access compared to the previous weekends number of mobile visits.

This was likely driven by people familiarising themselves with the new app and because the weather was especially changeable that weekend, with a real mix of sunny spells and showers.

As a result the hourly forecast feature was widely used as people kept track of the conditions and this feature drove 84% of the total mobile traffic over that weekend.

One of the other interesting trends we’ve noticed so far is how people use the BBC Weather app as part of their daily routine.

The most popular time for checking the weather is first thing in the morning between about 6 and 9am as people get up and start to prepare for the day and we see about 28 people per second requesting weather information.

Usage dips around 10am before a small peak at lunchtime, no doubt because people are checking to see if there’s a chance for an al fresco lunch.

As we approach the evening and prepare to head home we see a peak of 25 requests a second at around 6pm as people check to see that they don’t get caught out whilst making the most of the light nights, before the majority of s start to switch off from around 10pm.

Sunday evening is also proving a popular time to check the app as we again see about 25 requests a second as s look ahead and prepare for the week to come.

When we launched the app many of you commented on the things you liked, the things we could improve and some ideas for future features. All the has been extremely valuable and we’re already starting to address some of it.

It’s clear that many Android s like the homescreen widget but would also like a variety of widget sizes and we hope to introduce these soon. We are also looking at ways to improve how the app finds and displays your location.

Please continue to send your comments, we really appreciate all your and are reading all responses, but as there are so many it is not possible to reply to all that we get.

You can leave comments via reviews in Google Play and the iTunes app store, via twitter @BBCWeather, via our form or leave a comment below.

James Metcalfe is the senior product manager for the BBC Weather website.

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