Building a News Aggregator, Here Are 3 Crucial Secrets to Understand
There are various business sectors that are now being reshaped at a very astounding pace, fuelled predominantly by a lot of digital innovations. These radical innovations, then, encourage IDN Media to keep on evolving一providing the best convenience for its users is no exception. It’s now committed to turning IDN App into a news aggregator, a software device that collects information from all IDN Media’s publishers. Today, Hurul Aini, Product Manager of IDN Media, explained some phases that IDN Media should undergo to actualize that independent news aggregator.
1. Identifying the users’ needs
Users’ needs are the cornerstones of the success of just any product. Innovations will never work, unless we can cover latent end-users’ needs. To find them out, Aini mentioned, “First thing to do is to distinguish features we want to develop from what our users actually need. That’s why we’ve got to do user research一the very specific one where we can implement a quantitative approach. The data is obtained directly from the user representatives through a well-structured interview.”
As we strive to improve our understanding of their users’ needs, we also use a qualitative approach. She said, “Since our users’ behavioral actions can take place on various time scales, we can understand how or why certain tendencies occur. Applying those two types of approaches, we, then, can conclude that users now tend to access content from various sources, in which users can set their interests and preferences by themselves.”
Before transforming into a news aggregator, IDN App was only all about IDN Times, one of IDN Media’s publishers covering news and entertainment. However, IDN App has currently been developing itself into a one-stop content platform consisting of four publishers at once, namely IDN Times, Popmama.com, Popbela.com, Duniaku.com, and a lot of hyperlocal articles that can be accessed in just one single application.
2. Data in product development
Data is one of the key components of research used to validate credibility. “Data is very vital, given that it helps us make empirical decisions, not speculative ones. Measurable data is strictly important to determine what we will build next and to defining other new features. This makes it easier to gain alignment as well as send the right details of information to our engineering team. Therefore, we know that the development process is always there,” she stated.
Quizzes, for example, are considered to drive up the retention rate (the percentage of existing users who continue using a certain product over a given timeframe). However, users can’t always find that type of content easily. This issue must be further observed: how the product team can deliver more quizzes on the platform. The data obtained will be evaluated by the product team: are we developmentally highly impactful with low effort, or highly impactful with high effort, too? The first choice will surely provide faster and more valid solutions for users. “Hopefully, they will be more loyal,” Aini said.
3. Feedback and evaluation
During the process of developing a news aggregator, feedback from users significantly plays a crucial role, especially in optimizing features that can meet and fulfill their needs. “To have their feedback, we can conduct surveys and user interviews with the help of our loyal readers as well as new potential readers. With this method, we’ll understand their tendencies and so we can discover their insights. It becomes our very guidance to create more personalized content, depending on the users’ preferences,” said Aini in detail.
It’s a simple illustration of communication built by product developers to its users. IDN Media is committed to evaluating its products by validating them through data support so that users can read easily and comfortably.
