News Feed. Simply put, a feed is simply a list of publications that users can scroll through to see headlines and summaries of recently published news. Previously, the list was based only on when the news was published. Now it’s common to personalize the feed for each user based on their past activity, list of favorite topics and authors, location, recommendations from other readers and more – all of this data is usually tied together by artificial intelligence, like in Google News.
Registration, login. Most news sites don’t require registration to read and search for news. But they do offer people the ability to do so, allowing them to comment on news, build lists of favorites, choose their favorite news topics, subscribe, and more. Registration can take place via email, phone number, or Google and Facebook accounts.
News publishing. To publish, edit and manage your news you need to implement a content management system (CMS) on your site. It should include an editor of Readymag, WordPress and Medium level, where you can not only type texts, but also work with images, videos and tables.
User Profile. The user profile collects all the information about the user: name, avatar, date of birth, gender, image, contacts, links to social networks, favorite topics and maybe even a short description. In addition, the user profile usually also allows you to customize the appearance of the site, privacy levels, payment information (subscriptions), newsletter, and more.
Search Engine and Filters. A search engine is a tool that allows you to find publications of interest by using keywords, categories, hashtags and other filters. On news sites, the usual search system can be extended by creating a kind of news tree, noting the cause and effect relationship between events (the markup of the relationship should be done by experts).
The ability to “follow.” No one likes repeating the same action over and over again, even if it’s just selecting a topic from a list. That’s why popular news sites offer a “follow” feature, with which people select one or more news topics once, which will form their news feed. On The Guardian’s site, users can also follow specific authors in addition to (or instead of) topics.
Commenting on news stories. This is a useful feature that, on the one hand, allows readers to express their thoughts and interact with each other, which increases their engagement. On the other hand, you can use comments to understand which news (authors) your users like. However, there is a negative moment here: if the topics covered in your news site are interesting or controversial, you can attract Internet trolls who will provoke conflicts among users. In this case, you need to implement some kind of comment moderation.
Pop-up notification. What’s the use of notifications on a news portal? Well, you can use them to notify users about the latest news, the release of new publications by your favorite authors, the imminent end of a subscription, to respond to their comments, to remind them about forgotten bookmarks and saved articles. Push notifications can also be used to communicate, conduct surveys, or sign up for newsletters.
Location Targeting. Having geotargeting means that your news app can know the location of users’ devices and automatically detect the interface language or send users news about events happening nearby. This feature is especially useful for sites that publish news about local or time-limited events, such as where to spend your free time or buy something at a discount today.
Recommendations to readers. Sometimes publications touch on the same issues but don’t fall into the same category, or a user reads a couple of texts on a topic they are not subscribed to. In such cases, your news site should recommend similar articles to the reader (at the bottom of the publication). The best way to implement this feature is with modern artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning mechanisms, which, if done correctly, can provide more accurate recommendations, which will keep users coming back to your site again and again.
Subscription, freemium model. If you choose a monetization model that involves paid access to content, you must show the usefulness of that content. How exactly to do this depends on the topic. For example, news about financial markets is best marketed by talking about its speed of appearance and accuracy, whereas news about scientific research is marketed with maximum completeness of data.