Create a News App and Website || News App Development

Project Overview

Getting authentic and reliable news is scarce in the world of Social Media. Whereas building a news portal and apps are not practical for all media houses in Saudi Arabia due to limited resources and technical expertise in the region. People are getting away from newspapers while relying widely on the information available across digital platforms, especially social channels. And, most of the information shared on these platforms are false, misleading and misinformed.

Our client, Abrar Alquraini from Saudi Arabia, wanted to build a platform for people looking for local, national and international news which they can trust. The news portal and apps will help news lovers get all types of news under one roof. Our client needed two apps (Android and iOS) and a portal to cover all tech-savvy populations.

COUNTRY

Saudi Arabia

SERVICE

Web Development, UI/UX Design,
Android/iOS App Development

INDUSTRY

News

Client’s Requirements for the News Apps and Portal

Even after a huge opportunity for a digital news portal, the user penetration rate is 3.8%. The biggest reasons for less user interest was the poor UI/UX and quality apps. Our client Abrar Alquraini wanted us to build two apps for Android and iOS platforms and a web portal. The apps and portal must be easy to access for users of all age groups.

During consultation, he put more focus on the app’s UI/UX to make the portal engaging enough, no matter what technologies to design it needed. The client explained that it needs a platform that could bear heavy traffic and provide a seamless surfing experience.

Our Approach for better Scalability and Performance

Once we got a node from our client to go ahead, we formed a team to work on the project. The team included senior-most developers, designers and a project manager. The first goal was to come up with a roadmap for the project.

We conducted a thorough analysis, explored the industry, market gaps, needs, demand, competitors and all we needed to make the project stronger. Having done the initial analysis, our project manager had a meeting with a client and explained everything that we’d gathered.

Our client wanted to create a news app for cross platforms, so we chose to go with hybrid app development. We suggested Ionic technology and the set of features and support we will provide during and after the news app development. All suggestions were accepted by our client and get green signal to get started.

Key Features

We created the app and the portal with a single user panel, so our focus was entirely on the user side. We selected the features carefully after going through competitor analysis. Ultimately the aim was to make it exclusive.

Panel Features

Login / User Registration
OTP verification
Home (All top news will be displayed here)
Menu Tab (Users can navigate to the desired section)
GPS/Google Maps
YouTube Tab
Bookmark video & share
Profile
Edit Profile
Contact Us
Details (News details / Add / edit / delete)
Comments for News
Terms & Conditions
Categories (Add / Edit / Delete favorite categories)
Highlights (Breaking news)
Offline Mode
Social Sharing (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram)
Push Notification
Personalization & Settings

The Key Challenges We Encountered With

As we had already developed many online news applications, we faced minimal challenges. However, as we had to develop apps using hybrid technology, we had to deal with various types of third party features integration -a few of them were challenging one.

App required plenty of third party feature integration

The third party feature integration was not a complex issue for our team, but there were a few which were really time consuming and kept our team busy with finding the right solutions. For example, one of the features was Qibla that directs deity to Kaaba. We did it right as our client wanted.

Tight Deadline

Initially, our team thought they would get ample time to finish the project, but as the things were finalized and the project plan was handed over to the team, they were absolutely numb seeing the deadline. It was the most challenging task for them to finish such a complex app within the tight deadline. But, given the world class infrastructure, best working environment, our team successfully achieved the deadline. Not only was the project completed in the deadline, but it was deployed on the downloading platform.

What Makes the App Unique

You can download the apps from the play store and app store to explore the quality of the project. You can also get a glimpse of the app through these exhilarating screenshots.