BoardingArea
Native app for their frequent flyer and travel enthusiast readers
Project overview
Quick Facts
Project Focus
Native App Development
Platform
iOS & Android
Key Services
UX/UI, Product Development, QA
The challenge
The BoardingArea readership was accustomed to the website experience, requiring a native app that could increase daily readership, monetize effectively, and compete with other travel news leaders without alienating existing users.
The solution
We designed and developed a native app framework using React Native, focusing on a simplified reader journey with streamlined onboarding, preference setting, and custom features for bookmarking and following authors/topics.
The results
The app was successfully launched on the App Store and Google Play to much success, achieving its goals of providing a better-filtered experience and increasing readership.
1
Project background and goals
The Client and Their Vision
25 Years of Travel News
BoardingArea was created by the same people who founded some of the most popular business travel and frequent flyer websites on the internet and have continued for 25 years to deliver the best travel blogs all in one place. With an avid readership of flyers visiting their site on the daily for their curated news, the BoardingArea team knew it was time to bring a native app to their audience. We were approached to bring that vision to the app stores with an app that could 1) deliver curated news in a more easily filtered experience 2) be intuitive to navigate between their different topics and 3) increase their daily readership.
2
Establishing goals for their news digest
Challenges of the Migration
Mindful of Current Users
BoardingArea has been a top choice for traveling news for almost three decades and because of that, their readership were accustomed to how the website was set up currently and the mobile experience with that. We wanted to be mindful of the current users while ensuring the new experience could further our goals:
Grow their audience by being discoverable in the app stores- Re-affirm BoardingArea as a leader in travel content by staying competitive with a native app
- Increase the daily readership of the site
- Monetization and advertisment revenue
3
Designing for the ideal reader journey
Moving Experiences
From Desktop to Native
This wasn't a completely greenfield project with an established website and WordPress API that aggregated their news. With a framework and brand in place to reference, we focused our efforts on the overall user experience from download to setting up preferences to reading an article. Our team did a lot of research into editorial and news apps currently on the market by testing and using ourselves to take note of small interactions and UX patterns. We paid particular attention to the flow from article to the author blog to make sure readers could still read the content they'd like but easily be brought back to the main BoardingArea experience for more articles.
Our Approach for Improvements
Enhancing Every Touchpoint
Together with the client and our app development team, we designed and developed a native app that would improve each touchpoint of the reader journey such as:
A brief onboarding process that helps new readers understand the mission of BoardingArea and how to use app effectively- Walkthrough of setting up their preferences to get to the news that matters to them the most as quickly as possible
- When browsing articles, readers have the ability to bookmark for later, follow authors, and read offline
- Ever-present stateful filter to continually allow readers to adjust their topics and regions for where they're flying
- Easier process of visiting an author's blog to read their article and be navigated back to the main app seamlessly
Quick look at what we did
4
Native ios & android app development
App Development
For React Native App
At the start of the project, our developers and client team consulted on the best approach for bringing their current features to the app and what would remain as webview — removing complexity and keeping things simple when possible that didn't hinder the overall experience — and what would be handled natively. What evolved was a primarily native framework specifically built for iOS and Android that relied on a multiple RSS system and custom features developed to bookmark, mark unread, accessibility settings, and ability to follow authors and topics. The app has been launched on App Store and Google Play to much success with their readership.
Project Background and Goals