Offsite is a news portal dedicated to providing audiences a comprehensive, objective, immediate and in-depth information. The editorial team and expert columnists deliver news, analysis, commentary and research on issues related to politics, economy, foreign affairs, technology, sports, and lifestyle.
We partnered with Offsite to create a solid, extensible mobile application with React Native for both iOS and Android, that would help users seamlessly enjoy and discover the best of journalism in one place. The media portal needed to meet consumers through their preferred channel – mobile phones and tablets – in a way that made the content shimmer and the user experience brand-worthy.
The best mobile experiences require a robust backend foundation. React Native heavily utilises JavaScript, coupled with the intuitive architecture of the framework itself. The use of React Native brings the speed and agility found in web development to the mobile app development environment. From the earliest stages of product conception and strategy, our API architects focused on designing a server-side solution tailored to the specific requirements of Offsite.
With the use of proprietary APIs, we enabled robust sorting and filtering options, letting the client fetch only what it needs. Created through a Rest Export View, this API call returns a list of the newest articles first. For fetching more articles, we added page url parameter specifying the page you want to fetch. For featured articles, this API call fetches the articles that exist within the Frontpage Featured entity queue. A useful communication avenue unique to mobile is the push notification. We used Firebase, to manage device tokens and send push notifications to iOS and Android users.
The work on the back end, as well as the ongoing strategic counsel and input has improved Offsite's agility in the mobile app world, allowing them to pivot much more quickly than before the engagement began. We quickly fashion and deploy versions of the app. This includes changes to the iOS and Android apps, as well as major updates on the backend systems for the app.
Over to you! Looking to build a mobile app? Contact us using the form below and let us propel your idea to the next level.