Reinventing the largest news brand in The Netherlands

Digital Product Design
Software Engineering

ADR Nieuwsmedia is the largest news brand in The Netherlands. It comprises of one national daily, Algemeen Dagblad, and seven regional newspapers.

In 2016, Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad (AD) decided to renew its website and mobile app from a digital innovation perspective. In The Pocket chose to rebuild the app from scratch, completely native and with focus on performance and user experience (the old AD-app was a hybrid app, a cover-up of the mobile site).

We sought a return to the core of iOS-standards: multiple menu buttons at the bottom of the homepage, leading to different subcomponents of the app. Visuals and headlines dominate the experience, and in doing so the app refers to the look and feel of the renewed AD-website.

The buttons Home, New, Region, Sports and Show constitute the new menu, and that way embody the AD-philosophy. ‘New’ provides you with the most recent items in chronological order, so you can find the latest bulletin immediately at the top. Under ‘Region’ you can select the local news from the area you prefer. ‘Sports’ gathers all sports-related items and click on ‘Show’ for all about media-related and showbizz news.

“It’s a solution that is great for both our customers and our company. We’ve created eight strong apps that can be optimized quickly to give new features to our readers on a regular basis.”
Paul Vereijken (Product Manager ADR Nieuwsmedia)

7 REGIONAL NEWS APPS

Based on the AD-app, no less than 7 versions were generated for the regional newspapers BN DeStem, Brabants Dagblad, Eindhovens Dagblad, de Gelderlander, de Stentor, PZC and Tubantia. Crucial to the development of the new apps was the creation of a white label app that allowed for regional titles to tweak the look and feel of the app to their brand. Logo, colours, newsfeed, … can all be changed for each title. But it also allows for rapid innovations and added functionalities across all eight apps. We only need one codebase to maintain all eight apps. And the team at ADR can allocate its resources a lot more efficiently.

Results

In addition, users are asked to evaluate the app on a regular basis. Since the rating trigger feature was added to the app, the number of ratings multiplied. Although they had to get used to the new lay-out – feedback we also experienced at the release of the new website – customers are far more positive about the app than before: top speed and stability, accessible and easy to scan.

Our approach

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