About Client
NOW is a USA Based Media and Production company focused on delivering real-time authentic news coverage to digital users around the world. The USP for the NOW app is the fastest ground reporting of the events happening worldwide. With a vast network of media journalists, reporters and activities NOW is able to attract a massive userbase and deliver them information within seconds. Awarded as the People’s Favorite News Mobile App, NOW has been ruling the media landscape for the last 5 years.
NOW understood the wave of digital transformation way before its competitors did. This helped them attract and capture a large part of the audience with a beautifully developed app. Garnered over 1 million downloads combined in App Store and Play Store, NOW became the most popular choice of users in 2018 awarded by Play Store in Instant News App Category.
The News Sharing app covers every aspect of daily life and delivers informative pieces for every segment of society. Be it politics, sports, entertainment, technology, business, Gadgets, Esports or anything, NOW is the leading source of information for the majority of USA readers.
Spreading across 50 states of USA, reporters submit thousands of stories daily which are featured in the app in real-time. With 12+ Languages covered, this app never leaves any audience away from the happening world.
About the App
The challenge in crafting a seamless experience for the NOW users was to have a dynamic database with real-time sharing of information from multiple sources. Technically, it required using the right set of technologies for making the app reliable, powerful and incredible with User Interface.
With live users in a number of thousands at any instant, the NOW app had to go through multiple rounds of peak testing and stress testing. The team of GRAFFERSID made sure that every part of the app is able to handle users at a rate of 100 million per day without any glitch.
Being first towards the digital transformation, NOW had to explore new features in the prototype. Experts at GRAFFERSID reduced the market time of NOW app by 3X during with successful prototype development and testing it over a number of users.
Users now enjoy the unique experience of NOW app and the userbase is growing at an exponential rate. The exceptional hard work done at the development phase of NOW app is reflecting in terms of growing revenue. Though, the core part of the success of the app is its features. Let’s go through them.
Features of the App
With tens and hundreds of categories getting thousands of stories every day in multimedia format, delivering a personalized experience for every user was the challenge ahead of the development team. Features like using category filters, content filters, word filters helped users to search for the information they are looking in no time. Machine learning algorithm worked in the back-end for improving the experience for users in their next visit.
User Sign up and Log In
More than 40% of the app does not have user-oriented features and personalized feed but NOW wanted to create a connection with each user. Creating a user account for every profile helped the app to create feed specialized experience and also use their data of interests, likings to find the feed out of thousands every day. To give a unique feel of the profile, setting a username which is 100% unique is allowed for every user. This username distinguished their profile with others even if same name persons are using it.
Choose Preferences
Machine learning algorithms work on the back-end to find out the feed for uses while the app also asks the user to submit a minimum of 3 categories of NEWS they are looking for. Users are also asked to submit the languages they would like to see the news in which does not restrict them from changing the languages and preferences again. Allowing users to control their reading and viewing experience, NOW app is, therefore, the favourite in the industry.
Search
NOW is one of the largest media houses in the USA and it shows that the news articles would be in numbers. Therefore, giving a search option for the users right at the top of the screen enables them to find the information quickly.
Search with Filter
Stepping ahead from the normal search, NOW app has advanced search through the use of filters. With innovation driven through the unique process of development by the team of GRAFFERSID, this NOW app has everything user-centric. Filters can be used with “words” and categories along with the date of the event.
Save for Later
NOW has considered every class of society while creating the app. For business persons who don’t get time to read frequently, they can save the news to read later. All users use the Later feature for detailed news and reports which are important
Personal Profile
Creating a personal profile is always a joyful moment for any user. NOW app has options to create a profile with details like Name, Location, Profile Image and much more. Over 3 million profiles have been created in the NOW app within 3 years of its launch.
Notification Settings
Notifications are an important part of any app for its promotion and invoking user to use it again. But NOW has allowed the users to customize the notifications settings with advanced features. Yes, NOW asks users to pause and play notifications according to the days. People can pause the notification if there are busy days coming and they can start them again. Also, notifications can be paused for a specific day in the week like Wednesday or Tuesday and can be set ON for any other day likewise.
Domain-Specific Communities
Along with categories in the search, NOW app has a separate collection of stories and information over a certain topic. Science, Technology, Business, Politics, Gaming, Sports, Entertainment are some of the 45 Communities where stories across the world are shared. People with certain interest can become a follower of such communities and Notifications alert them for any new story in the section.
React and Comment to the Stories
Emotions make humans more humans. NOW app understands the psychology of human while reading any topic. It gives /plenty of options for users to react to the stories. The number of reactions on every story is visible for the users and it shows the popularity of the story. Along with reacting to it, Users are also allowed to comment on the stories. Commenting can be any length and the name of the user is shown.
Comments can be of multimedia format including audio, video, links, GIFs and Images. The number of comments is visible on the feed preview and on further expanding the feed, all comments can be seen. Users are also allowed to reply back to the comments in the same way.
Weekly Bits of News
The algorithms at the back-end are continuously working towards creating different formats of news for the users. Every week, a custom feed of the most popular news is created and served. Algorithms ensure that the user has not visited those stories in the same week. There is also the features to save these stories in their feed of “Read Later”.
Tags
There are certain tags assigned to the news that defines the genre, popularity, timeline, and domain of the news feed. For every news, the popularity color is turned red when it gains a certain number of reactions. If the news fails to attract enough reactions to be called Popular, it is also marked in the news with a different color.
Profile Stats
Users profile has much more than what it seems. The number of followers for each profile is shown along with the follower’s analytics. The location of followers as a group, age, and interest is shown in Analytics Dashboard driven by Database backed algorithms deriving stats.
Real-time Weather Info
Going beyond boundaries, the News Sharing app has also Weather API enabled inside for users to know about the weather of any part of the world instantly. Adding cities of interest allows users to get weather information in seconds. With the creative minds of GRAFFERSID, the creation of this app has been smooth irrespective of the complex back-end process to maintain such a plethora of features.
Customize UI
Users are all time live in the app. They watch stories and read articles on day and night. Suiting to the varying times, NOW app has Shades of Themes for readers. The black theme for Night, Blue Eyes filter to reduce the stress over the eyes and white theme for the day are the three most popular UI used by their audience.
Source of News
The authenticity of the news article is at the top priority of the NOW app. Therefore, showing the source of the article in the preview and detailed format of the Stories is a must. Earning the trust of the uses with this feature, NOW app has 300k 5 Stars reviews on the Play Store. The overall rating of 4.8 reflects that users review the app with a genuine approach and helps it improve.
Seamless Navigation
Working on the simplistic UI driven with psychological principles, NOW app also has shortcuts to various parts of the app. The shortcuts to profile settings, communities, and preferred categories are always just a tap away. These shortcuts are customizable for the users.
There are tons of other features of the app that are attracting millions of people. Solving the challenge of digital transformation the team of GRAFFERSID enabled NOW to become the leading provider of Instant News on Mobile. The expertise of technology and experience of crafting successful apps has enabled GRAFFERSID to beat the challenges and attract growth for their clients.
What do the NOW Founders say about it?
We are just impressed by the work ethics of GRAFFERSID. Their timely delivery of the app and working on the improvements has been amazing for us. We reached targets and went beyond them with help of the technical expertise of this team. There was nothing tough for GRAFFERSID to achieve and made us favorite of our users. That’s the biggest achievement for me and NOW.
