Fresh features for newspaper/magazine mobile apps

Online newspaper or magazines are the fresh entertainment content for people who often love to read. In today’s world where people regularly use their mobile phones and need all information right on their handsets, it is necessary to have a native mobile app for every magazine or newspaper business. 

Besides native patterns of paper magazines or online presence,  news portal moved to a mobile version known as news apps.

To offer seamless reading experience to their readers, every newspaper company in the world has built a native (or hybrid) mobile application.

In recent years, Factory team provided iOS development and Android application development for the biggest news portal in Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Kuwait.

Our proven tactics and ideas got us to be one of the Top Software Development Companies – by algorithms, analysts and industry experts, Design Rush listed us in the Top 20 Software Companies in 2019!

We’ll share some behind-the-scenes while developing native mobile apps for the news industry and also provide you some fresh features for newspaper/magazine apps.

Hybrid VS native mobile app?

The bestselling newspaper in Bosnia & Herzegovina – Avaz.ba,  invested in better user experience and developed native mobile apps.  They had a hybrid app which was slow, unstable and often crashed.

In just over 2 months, since our native apps are live, the number of downloads on Android app had increased by 7% compared to the previous hybrid version, and by 11% on iOS devices. In the end, there are new 18,000 downloads in less than two months, both on Android and iOS downloads.

This is all thanks to the native application where our client invested in better user experience and switched from hybrid mobile app to iOS and Android application.

Case study: iOS and Android development for the bestselling newspaper in Bosnia & Herzegovina 

Features every newspaper/magazine mobile app must have

When the user hits your mobile app, you better have walkthrough screens where you can have a great onboarding process. With walkthrough screens, present unique features and benefits of your business for users. Walkthrough screens save users from stessing out whenever they use a new app; instead, they can rest assured knowing what every feature in app does and how to benefit from it.

Provide reader only news he’s interested in – include a feature we call “Tags”– the user can choose what information he wants to follow; he just clicks on the wanted tag and he can’t miss any of your news!

Swipe categories – it’s quick and easy – readers can enjoy favorite news by swiping through categories or articles you have for them.

Information structure – every feature on the website can be in your mobile app – in perfect order and how your readers like it and used to it!

News/magazine app without push notifications? Never!

Importance of push notification message is the fact they appear directly on the screen of devices. With that in the mind, it’s logical to expect their rate of success in getting a user’s attention is very high. But it’s not enough just to have push notification, there are many options that can ensure the success of push notification.

By receiving a push notification, your readers are up to date and it’s a friendly way of reminding them to use your app. There are a lot of ideas why push notification can help your business. Read them in bellow.

Case study: iOS and Android development for the most read Croatian news portal

How to personalize the news/magazine mobile app?

Personalization is one of the keys to increasing mobile app success and customer retention.

Evey of your reader is unique and has own personal preferences and topic they follow. iOS mobile app or Android mobile app is a perfect way to have meaningful conversations with them while they’re in the app.

Your task is to know user journey in your mobile app and enable them to use as much as features suited just for them.

The process of segmentation and customization your users isn’t easy, and it requires precious developing resources.

Today, it’s not enough to have a mobile app and think your reader will just come and use your app. There are basic features your app needs to have,(if you skipped paragraph “Features every app must have” it’s time to go back) but there is also space where you need to innovate and have fresh features in your app to differentiate you from all your competitors.

Let’s take a look at what fresh features your app needs to have:

Allow readers to easily send and share news for you 

And use it as your own article. Create an easy tab with all the needed information from your users and enable them to share a success story with you and thousands of your readers.

What’s there for your newspaper or magazine? 

Local news you can use to publish on your newspaper or magazine portal. Also, you are connecting with your readers and your users see how much you care about them.

For even better user experience, if your users send a really good article or news, reward them with some money or premium subscription on your magazine or newspaper.

Create a special tab “My news” and allow users to choose the subjects or categories they want to read

Enable your users to choose what information they want to receive and in that way, they can create their own folder in your app.

With this feature, your reader will have personalized tab just for him, and won’t be bothered with other articles or subject they are not interested in.

What’s there for your newspaper or magazine? 

You can analyze what topics your readers read the most and have more articles on that. We can create an “Events” where, with the help from our analytics tool, we can see on what article user decided to add that category/subject/tag on his list to read more. With that information, you can boost that author or articles on that specific topic and provide your user with better user experience and make sure your user won’t uninstall your app.

Highlight your favorite columnists in a special tab in your section “My news”

Another great feature for section My news is the option to choose favorite columnists your readers follows. With the power of analytics, you can see what columnist is most loved or what columns are most popular so you can write topics connected with the most popular one.

Enable customization of push notification for your users

Are you familiar with this situation – you’re in the meeting and your mobile phone is going crazy with push notifications from a different app. After a meeting, you don’t have time for looking at all of them, so you just delete or move to the trash icon all your notifications.

Because of this situation, we need to enable our users to choose the time when they want to receive push notifications about articles in categories they are interested in.  

What we can learn from this situation?

1. Don’t spam your readers.
2. Learn in what time they are relaxing and when they have time for reading news

How to boost engagement in news/magazine mobile app?

With all know features in your app, there is one thing that’s boosting every social media today. We’re talking about Facebook live or Instagram live.

Why video live is important for your business?

By the end of 2019 80% of internet traffic, will be from Video!

The main benefit of live video is it can drive traffic to our mobile app – live can be recorded anywhere, as long as we have the internet connection which is the smallest problem in today’s internet infrastructure.

How can you include live video in your newspaper/magazine mobile app?

Create a special tab for “Watch online” and allow users to see all your live shows or your live recordings with breaking news in the world.

Use the power of your reporters and enable them to spread the word about every live event they are attending. With watch online feature, your app will be the first one to inform users about some actual info or trending topic.

Do you have some other fresh idea for newspaper/magazine mobile app?

To sum up, the fundamental goal of your Android or iOS mobile app is to have an individual dialog with your readers, while they’re in your app. To do it right, you need a proven design and development agency to collect your ideas and turn them into reality.

The presence of a newspaper or magazine app in readers smartphone allows you to stay connected with your audience. People are connected to the world via their mobile phones, and by creating and maintaining your mobile app your magazine can be more popular and accessible.

Grand players prove it; Magazines’ companies can seriously profit from developing or continuously improving mobile apps. So, if you still don’t have a mobile app for your magazine business, catch up, because today’s choice generates the reason for the future of your magazine.