There has been a tremendous downfall in the sales of newspaper since the mobile apps came up for news. Every year the drop is increasing and it has been predicted that it will keep on moving low on the graph in the years to come. Just to check news update, average user is said to spend around 2 hours in a day on the phone.

People have been using mobile phones for quite a long time now but the extreme involvement of mobile apps into the human lives happened few years back. The average percentage of people using printed newspaper to read news on everyday basis is very low but those people are finding it much useful. The majority of the people are either not into reading news on daily basis or they are making use of mobile apps for the same.

It has been seen that majority of the news channels across the globe have been seen to experience degrade in the sales of print media compared to the TV channels and mobile apps. The development of a mobile app for news has been the main concern for a number of news channels.

This is where they are experiencing the bottleneck in expanding the viewership. Keeping the issue in mind here we are with an effective blog which can help them to know how much does it cost to develop a newspaper app for mobile phones all along with other important things.

ROI From News Apps

Whether you are planning to build your own news app or hire experienced company like App Developer Austin, you need to have a clear idea about the benefits you can expect from the news app. It is important to know that the amount of your investment is not going to matter at all as long as you will get amazing returns from the app.

Subscription

Just like we all run subscription offer for the printed newspaper, plan to come up with a subscription plan for your mobile app to deliver quality contents to the app user for a fee. Some of the prominent news apps like NYTimes, have come up with a plan where they offer limited number of quality free articles to the readers at a time. If they wish to read more they need to opt for a subscription.

Advertisement

Just on mobile advertisements more than $100 billion have been spent by businesses. Just having a mobile app in place can benefit a news company as it will act as a source of regular income. Your business can start making enough through the offer of personalized ads. You should also think about coming up with ads that will interest the readers as this will increase the possibility of the ads being looked upon and viewed.

Campaign for sponsors

Another way of making revenue is by running a personalized campaign on your news mobile app for sponsors. You can use the app to sell tickets for shows or events. This kind of service can be given to a particular group of people sharing similar interest or a said region or location.

More reach and readership

It is a fact that you will be able to increase your reach with mobile apps. The better the reach, better readership you will be able to enjoy. The number of news apps is larger in the countries like South Korea, Sweden and Spain. Again, it has to be added that the content presentation on the mobile apps is more appealing compared to what you see on the print media. The chances of readership are greatly influenced by the use of high-quality images and GIFs on the mobile apps.

So now you have a clear idea about the ROI that you can expect from a mobile app for newspaper. So, just check out the other important areas that concern news app development and the costs involved in building one.

Android or iOS – Which is a better choice?

When it comes to news app development, this comes up as the most common question that you will have to face. With both of them being the most popular mobile app platforms, there is an ongoing debate over deciding the same. When it comes to app security, iOS platform is considered as the most secured one while android enjoys the largest audience share. This means if you are new ones to the world of news app and want to attract more audience android is your choice or else if security is what all matters to you, choose iOS.

Again, you can think about coming up with cross-platform news app development too. This will open the window of opportunity to larger audience base. With cross-platform app development you will be able to save yourself from spending money on developing two separate apps for two different platforms all the while saving time on getting the app developed.

In case you have the plan to develop the mobile app for just a platform, then you should think about considering getting it done for iOS as the development costs are cheaper. With right iOS app development companies out there you will not be having a problem in finding the right partner for the job.

As it is all about news app development, location is said to play a very important role. Locals will be the first hand people who will show interest in your mobile app. So again try to understand the kind of the mobile platform that the locals prefer and choose it for the news app development. In short, opt for the platform that is more popular among your readers in that locale.

Login or registration

This is a very important feature. You should let the users create an account for themselves by using their email address or the mobile number. Additionally, you should also offer the facility to the users to allow them to use their social media account to login to the news app. Some of the prominent ones are Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. By offering such a facility you increase the chances of your news getting shared on the social media networks quite easily. This will be like easy promotion of your app in the best possible manner without spending a single penny.

User profile

Creating a user profile has to be done by the user and you can ask them the information which you think is relevant to you. With the help of user profiles you can easily come up with contents which can be of the interest of the user based on their past search results and likings. You can also use the user profiles to create engagement particularly for a news content and thus increase its reach.

Filter search option

This feature is popular one and most of the apps offer this to their users. When you have such a feature in place, it will become easy for the users to filter and look for news that they want to read and in return you will be able to know the content preference of your users. You can set the filter based on date, keyword, location or based on the trending news.

Good number of people is inclined towards reading news on the mobile phones and so you can think about coming up with push notifications which can let them know about the latest news update or just when something new has been posted out there. By having such a feature in place you will be able to send clear notifications to the users whenever something of their interest comes up. Again, it also helps news app with user retention by working as an effective marketing tool.

Filter the feed

What the user sees and what not can be controlled by filters. There can be an option made available which can be used by the user to decide if he or she is not interested to view the topic. The better feed the user will get, the more amount of time he or she will spend on the app.

All types of media

Words are not always enough to express the idea or the news and so the use of videos, images and audios are done to make the content interesting. The app should be able to offer support to all kinds of media including PDFs, GIFs, Slides, etc. This way it will become possible to express the idea in the better way.

Offline reading option

Most of the users for one or the other reason always want to keep some news preferred to be read when they are free or say for later when they are offline. By adding in this feature it becomes possible to read the content when you are not online. So for such contents having an internet connection is not mandatory.

Like, share and comment

When it comes to social media apps, this feature is considered to be a very important one and you should not keep it away in your news app. For a reader, the chance to share the news as well as engage with it adds up to the whole user experience. The share option can be made available to Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter, etc.

What is the cost to develop a news app?

The development of your news app depends on a number of factors. They have been mentioned below:

Type of development- hybrid or native
Type of platform- Android or iOS
Features that needs to be added in the app
In-house development or outsourcing
Hiring a freelancer or a development company

These are the factors which can truly affect the news app development. In general it is estimated that the MVP cost for the app can range in between $18,000 to $20,000. This is the amount estimated for a basic app and if you wish to add in additional features the cost will go up. In that case you need to think about a budget which range from $35,000 to $45,000.

Don’t get disturbed by the numbers. Just keep in mind that better you take off the development of your app, you have better chances to gain back your money through ROI.

If you have experience in working on Android or iOS platform, you will need the right tools to carry out the development and so in such case, development costs will stay low. Moreover, now you can even find tools which can help you calculate the cost of app development. You can even make use of them to get a rough idea about what the costs can turn out to be.

Summary

Developing a news app is a very important step for a newspaper business. It not only represents the business on the mobile app market but also works as a proven tactic to bring in the attention of the audience. So it is important to take care of each and every step when it is about development and development costs are no exception.