Build / Web app development

Mediahuis

Re-creating mobile apps for improved reader experience

Mediahuis, a leading Belgian media company known for titles like De Standaard, Het Nieuwsblad, and Gazet van Antwerpen, aimed to enhance their mobile reader experience. Until 2015, their apps were little more than mobile website wrappers. By partnering with icapps, they rebuilt their mobile apps from the ground up, improving performance, design, and scalability across multiple brands.

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The issue

Up until 2015, the mobile apps for each of the brands consisted simply of a ‘wrapper’ around the mobile website. To offer users a native mobile experience and improve their reading experience, Mediahuis decided to recreate the various news apps, from scratch, in Xamarin.

Our solution

Together with Mediahuis, we built a scalable news platform in Xamarin, making it possible to launch multiple branded apps from a single codebase. Starting with Het Nieuwsblad, we gradually rolled out native apps for De Standaard, Gazet van Antwerpen, and Het Belang van Limburg.

One shared Xamarin-based platform for multiple news apps
Native mobile experience tailored to each brand
Seamless collaboration between icapps developers and Mediahuis' .NET team
UX/UI enhancements based on real user feedback

icapps brings iOS expertise to the Mediahuis team

The Mediahuis team mainly consisted of .NET developers but missed iOS and Android skills. To fill this gap, Mediahuis partnered with icapps: our developers assisted the Mediahuis team on a fulltime basis. Because Mediahuis offers a free app for each of its titles, one platform was created which could then be used to launch several titles. Starting point was the news app of Het Nieuwsblad, followed by De Standaard, Gazet van Antwerpen en Het Belang van Limburg!

UX/UI for continued improvement

In a second - and ongoing - phase, icapps continues to assist Mediahuis. Our Concept & Design team translates ideas from the digital managers of the various brands into concrete improvements. They support the development team by creating new functionalities from a sketch on paper to the UI designs, and perform research to discover user needs and wishes.