How To Build A Popular Smartnews App? Check Out These Features

As we flip through the News each day, do you know why we call News that way?

As Google shows that a lot of people are searching for why News is called News, the answer is pretty simple, as the clue is in the name.

The name implies, “NEWS” is related to the presentation of new information. And, the meaning of the world became increasingly potent as online publications and apps started publishing news articles online.

Presently, newspapers, magazines and telegraph aren’t the only sources of News. Indeed, the forerunner app development companies in Dubai, USA, India and across the globe, helped the media sphere to evolve impressively. Alike the two-third Americans, many of you read articles and posts on Medium (A platform to share stories), browse aggregators like SmartNews that clutch together reports from different web portals; and find digital News among other posts in your social newsfeed.

Out of the total population, approximately half say they get news from Facebook. But, before opting social media as a pathway to news, Just learn about Facebook’s Fake News Scandal, and you will understand why a significant percentage of 71% don’t trust social media and 36% rely on newspapers.

People want news from reliable news channels like BBC, Gulf News, The New York Times etc. Engaging with news apps developed by leading app developers in Dubai for these well-established firms often result in high income. In 2019, the Guardian mobile app stated that 29% of revenue comes from the user of their mobile app. At the same time, the New York Times predicted to generate $800 million in revenue by the end of 2020.

Isn’t that alluring?

So, if you want more clients and boost their loyalty — as well as get more significant revenue. Here’s all you need!

The Roadblocks Media Outlets Face For The News Mobile App

Niketa Patel, in-charge of news partnership at Twitter, Richard Gingras, the head of news and social products at Google and many other news influencers have counted the below roadblocks for online magazines and newspapers:

• Declining Media Income.

As users tend to install ad blockers to turn a deaf ear to annoying banners ads and focus on the main content often result in decreasing income.

• Minimal Engagement Rate

Fewer active users and short session durations make it daunting to improve the engagement rate. Individuals prefer to discuss the news on social media than on a news app or a respective news portal.

• Increasing Readers Churn Rate

Because of the editorial mistakes that make it to print as writers and editors casually squeeze within deadlines at the cost of quality.

So, to be successful, your news app cannot be like another news aggregator, rather it has to be as interactive as social media, have high-quality content and even, monetize in new ways. If your app doesn’t meet the criteria and you do nothing about it, then there is a high risk that your app will lose its audience and money.

But, don’t worry. Here is how to make a news app that will help you overcome these challenges.

Features For Your App To Attract More Users And Make Them Loyal

Did you ever think why people discuss news on social media or independent blogging sites and not on your website or your app?

It’s simple because, with social networks, users get a choice for a hectic social life, news about their friends and idols, audio and video content and games. Although a bottleneck competition with social media at first may seem like jumping off a cliff with a parachute, there are things you can do better — or at least as well.

• Make Your App Easy To Navigate

Whether you agree or not, navigation and content structure are still soft spots of social media apps. You can win more loyal users for your news app if your content is well streamlined:

• Newsfeeds with categories consisting of breaking and popular news
• Saved articles and collections to read later
• Advanced search by author, topic and category
• Offer A Touch Of Personalization

By utilizing the emerging Machine Learning technology like Amazon Personalize, you can offer feeds that are carefully customized to meet individual specific needs. With such a technology stack, you can add a human touch and use social filtering to advise contents that were earlier accessed by other people who read or watched the same news.

For instance, SmartNews uses a machine-learning algorithm that predicts which topics will interest users.

• Socialize Your News App

Make your news app as interactive as social networks to get more people to use it frequently. Also, you can offer your readers with the following perks.

• Rate content and comment on it with threaded reverts
• Follow influencers and specific news categories
• Share words and quotes from articles and posts

And, lastly don’t forget to provide push notifications and newsletter about new content by category and influencers to accelerate interest in your content.

• Offer Distinctive Yet Diverse Content

On social media, you can easily find diverse audio and video content along with live videos and audio streams.

So, why not to provide such content in your news app?

Your application can display short documentaries, business analysis, political debates and many other choices included. An online magazine about fashion can show makeup tutorials and fashion commentaries for the fashion week.

If you are thinking how’s it possible, let’s take an example of the news app that has already opted this approach — “Newsy: Video Apps”. The app offers complete news stories within two-minutes (short-synopsis) videos and podcasts.

If you choose to integrate such features in your news app, make sure your technology partners are well-versed with audio streaming and video streaming apps. Surprisingly, Virtual Reality apps are yet another exciting opportunity for creating news apps. Rather of just simply reading the content, people get immersed in the story. VR technology allows viewers to experience events like conflicts, protests and championships almost like they were there. Even, the famous The New York Times has already released a VR app for streaming news that available for both iOS and Android.

So, add this emerging technology in your app to make it stand out in the crowd.

• Reply To Reader’s Queries And Requests

The untrue part is here: Mostly a dozen out of 1,500 Americans news firms actually have a person assigned to respond to user’s comments and complaints. The reason behind this is usually budget concerns, and not all news businesses are ready to hire an ombudsman, whereas the well-established news houses need an entire team of them.

But, the good news is that you don’t need multiple people to manage hundreds and thousands of user comments. You just need a team of experts at the help centre to assist you. The Gulf News, BBC, The New York Times and many more to the list have dedicated web resources and a solely dedicated app screen where users can see FAQs, information about the firm and its paid services, and terms of use as well as report concerns.

Moreover, make sure your partner app development company offers the pop-up form feature with options for sending feedback, reporting errors, and leaving complaints.

• Strive To Drive Perfect Content

According to a Daily Source surveyed journalist globally, 40% of them stated that their news organizations don’t have a person responsible for accessing and reviewing requests for corrections. One choice to manage mistakes and corrections effectively is to use an auto-correct feature.

While articles and pieces of writing go through an entire cycle of editing and correction, readers somehow find errors. To eliminate the number of such mistakes, you can embed Scribendi proofreading API to highlight and suggest revisions to texts in your admin panel before you publish.

• Offer 3A’s — Accessibility Anytime Anywhere

Chances are you have seen an exciting piece of writing about the true design cost of apps and want to read it on the plane or in someplace without a Wi-Fi network. With social media features, you have to wait unless you find an internet connection. But, in your news app, you can offer offline mode and let users download content for later viewing.

• Offer Recreation

Have you probably tried your hands on the quite popular instant games on Facebook?

People often play these games when they have ideal 10–15 minutes, or they have nothing to do. That makes it a good idea to add HTML 5 games to your app. Ask your partner mobile app developers in Dubai to integrate your app from 3D shooters to puzzles and crosswords making your news app a hubspot for recreation.

Here’s What Else You’ll Need For Your News App?

There are yet some other things you have to be aware of when you make your mind to create an app for your news business. Let’s find what they are.

• The Subtle Difference — Hybrid or Native App

Before developing an app for your company, you will have to select whether it has to be Native or a Hybrid app. The hybrid app appears like a better option at first — you develop only one app for iOS and Android, saving money and time. But, building news apps for three platforms (iOS, Android and web) or a single native app will allow you to accomplish:

• Improved performance for non-text content
• A highly responsive, personalized and user-friendly interface
• Unparalleled security for mobile apps
• Accessibility to all native API’s
• Offers functions that are related to the operating systems like access to contacts, cameras, locations and so on.

Although your initial investments in Native apps will be inclined towards an expensive side at first, in the long run, you might not have to fix user interface and performance issues. Moreover, you will have fewer security concerns and will worry much less about your content being breached and disturbed without your permission.

• Effective Content management system

Mostly, you are already using a Content Management System (CMS) to upload articles to your site with different text styles, videos, animations effects, video and audio clips. But, for a mobile app, you need to make sure your opted mobile app development in Dubai integrates a reliable CMS.

The giants of the industry like CNN, BBC, The Gulf News have their own customs CMS’s, and they have spent a pretty penny and a lot of time creating them. You can either follow their footsteps and build your own CMS or use a solution like Directus.

• Metered Paywall

This is the mechanism hidden behind a paid subscription that allows news firms to confine the amount of content available for free. For example, there are three articles per month free in the Washington Post. The app has its own paywall developed by ARC publishing. Again, you can develop your own paywall like the flourished news player does or select among ready ones like Pool or Leaky Paywall.

News companies have come a long way, yearning digitalization, and now they are fighting with a social network for the spot of the primary news channel. But, creating a dedicated news app with a trusted development company can act as the secret weapon to win this fight. With a news app, you offer user-friendly navigation and better-structured content that’s customized and diverse to make users want to use your app more often in comparison.

Now, as we know about the development and features for a news app, let’s get an insight into the most popular news apps.

The Most Popular News Apps Review

So here are some of the most popular news apps across the globe at the moment:

• Google News
• BBC
• New York Times

Let’s dive a little deeper and analyze each of them in brief.

• Google News

Whether you believe it or not, Google News is one of the popular services in the world. Thus, it’s surprising that Google introduced an official app for its news aggregator. The core purpose of the app is briefing updates — stories selected according to your interests. Other features worth mentioning are full coverage (analysis of different accounts), source selection, subscription to favourite magazine portals.

• BBC

BBC — British Broadcasting Corporation is among the largest media giants globally having its own mobile app for iOS and Android devices. The essential feature app offers are news alert, personalize feed, videos, stories and live broadcast.

• The New York Times

One of the most prominent American newspapers, the New York Times, also has its news app for iOS, Android and even Kindle. The app is free to download but needs purchasing a subscription package to get complete access. The vital features are saving articles across devices, section list customization, search and filtering.

To Sum Up “Get In The News”

The news industry is continually evolving and developing with the help of emerging technologies. Like it presents numerous opportunities, especially in the field of app development. The popular news agencies across the globe have their own branded apps. At the same time, there exist many popular news aggregators which present users with the most exciting and relevant stories from the trusted sources.

Whichever news app you decide to create, you need to make sure that you align with trusted app development company . Their experts include the essential features making your app unique in the flooded choice.

On the off chance that you have thought for a resourceful app for a news app, you can cross-check it with your Free Project Estimation today.