How to Build An App Like CNN News?

Last updated on December 26th, 2023 at 10:14 am

After Covid-19 pandemic, there is an increase in number of mobile devices. Today, news apps have become increasingly popular as they provide users with a personalized and convenient way to consume news content. CNN (Cable News Network) news is a popular news app with up-to-date news coverage, customized news recommendations, and live streaming.

Suppose you are interested to create a news app like CNN. In that case, there are different key factors to be considered, such as defining the app’s features and purpose, selecting the development platform and technology, designing the user interface, developing the application, publishing the app, and promoting the app.

What is CNN?

CNN enables the live coverage and evaluation of breaking news as well as a broad spectrum of business, sports, weather coverage, entertainment, science, and in-depth interviews that are now taking place.

In more than 200 countries across the world, CNN Worldwide offers an array of more than two dozen news and data services available by satellite, cable, wireless devices, internet, and satellite TV.

Comparatively to any other live TV news organizations in the US, CNN has a larger domestic audience on television, mobile devices, and the internet. Around the world, CNN is a widely seen news source that reaches more than 260 million homes. It constantly ranks as the top website for current events and news.

Market Statistics About the CNN News

Source: Global News & Magazines App Market

• In 2021, there were 1.18 billion USD in revenue from news and magazine apps worldwide. Between 2022 and 2028, it is projected to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 11%.
• In 2022, the market for news and magazines will generate US$4.39 billion in total sales.
• A forecasted 13.40% CAGR from 2022 to 2027 for total revenue means that by 2027, the market would be worth an estimated US$8.79 billion.

Source: Statista

• In February 2023, the news website with the most monthly visits in the USA was the New York Times website and cnn.com.
• The total monthly visits to these websites were 418.6 million and 400.3 million, respectively.

What Are the Benefits of Developing A News App?

There are some key benefits of developing a news app like CNN. Let’s discuss the explanation of each benefit in detail.

Control Content Distribution

You have complete control over the content distribution with your own news app. You can ensure that your users only receive relevant and better-quality content. Consider accurate sources and articles in your app and offer a customized and focused user experience.

Develop A Better User Experience

A news app can offer a better user experience than browsing news websites on a mobile browser. Using a news app, you can offer a customized experience for each user. It must be based on the user’s reading habits and interests.

To enhance the user experience, you may include the in-app search, push notifications, and bookmarks.

Push Notifications

It is a robust way to keep your user engaged and informed regarding breaking news, updates, and other relevant data. Using push notifications, you can keep your users up-to-date on the current news and events, even while they are not actively using your app.

App Store Optimization (ASO)

ASO is a process of optimizing the visibility of your app and ranking on the app store. You may increase visibility and attract more users by optimizing the ranking of keywords, metadata, and other factors. It can help your news app that stands out among the thousands of other applications in the app store, increasing the possibility that users will discover and download your app.

Besides these benefits, a news app can offer a News revenue stream for media companies and publishers. News apps like CNN can obtain revenue through advertising, subscription models, and in-app purchases.

Overall, building a news app can support you to reach a wider audience, offer a better user experience, and create news revenue opportunities.

Monetization Models For News Apps

Here, we will provide the details regarding some monetization models for news apps:

Subscription

This model performs well for developed news companies with a stable reader base and can provide better quality content that readers are willing to pay for. This model can support news companies to reduce their dependence on ad revenue and keep their editorial independence.

Advertisement

It is a standard monetization model for news applications, allowing them to provide users with free content while generating revenue. But, news apps must balance serving ads to users and not overwhelming them with too many ads that can lead to ad fatigue and declined engagement.

In-App Purchase Or Access

This model permits news apps to provide premium features to users for free. For instance, a news app may provide an ad-free version for a one-time charge or a premium subscription that considers access to exclusive features or content.

Selling Data by Anonymizing It

This monetization strategy permits gathering user data and selling it to third-party advertisers or data brokers. To protect user privacy, the data is highly anonymized, meaning it is stripped of any addressing data that can be applied to link it back to the individual users.

Exchanging the Traffic

It considers partnering with other apps or websites to exchange traffic and increases user engagement. For instance, a news app may partner with a weather app to give users a seamless experience between the two applications.

Campaign for Sponsors

This approach provides the sponsored content or runs ads campaign for sponsors. It can be profitable if the news app has an engaged and larger audience that is attractive to advertisers. But, news apps should be careful to keep their editorial independence and not compromise the integrity and quality of their content to satisfy sponsors.

Top Features to Create a News App Like CNN

Whether textual or audio-visual, mobile apps have transformed how republican candidates consume daily news, most individuals anticipate dynamic, user-friendly, and reliable news apps.

You must consider certain top CNN News app features that set your app apart from your competitors to develop a solid competitive benefit.

Following are some significant features to consider while creating a news app like CNN.

Essential Features of News App

To develop a solid competitive benefit, you must focus on basic features essential for your apps. Let’s discuss some fundamental features of apps like CNN News.

Login or registration permits users to create an account and log in to the app. This CNN News app feature can be effective for customizing the user experience and enabling the features like saving articles or personalizing the app’s settings.

User profile: It lets the users view and edit their profile data, like their name, email, preferences, and address.

Filter search option: Having a filter in the search option lets the users search specific news using keywords, topics, authors, or other criteria.

Push notification: This CNN News app feature enables the users to send notifications to users when new articles are published or when there are breaking news stories.

Filter the feed: Filtering helps the users customize their news feed by choosing topics, categories their interest or filtering out content they don’t like to see.

Offline reading option: Most users prefer to save articles for offline readings, which can be sound for users who want to read articles while they don’t have an internet connection.

All media-inclusive: Words cannot make content more engaging and exciting. That’s why images, videos, and audio come into the picture. The news app must support various media types, such as slides, GIFs, and PDFs. It gives high flexibility for delivering the proper message and expressing it adequately.

Like, comment, and share: It enables users to interact with articles by commenting, liking, and sharing them with their social networks. The option to engage the users in the news creates a memorable user experience.

Advanced News App Features

Developers must start by considering all the advanced CNN News app features required to give their users the best experience. Let’s check out these.

Audio Format: This CNN News app feature enables you to listen to news articles in audio format. Hence, you can consume news while on the go or doing other tasks.

Text Customization: Users can customize the colour, font style, and size of the text in an article to enhance readability and accommodate users having visual deficiencies.

Video Integration: Ensure to integrate the video files in your news app. You can record news items, broadcast live news, and other political debates on your app by considering the video resources. It aids in making your app highly interesting and increases user engagement.

Live streaming: It enables the app to stream live news events like press conferences or breaking news stories in actual time. Live streaming can be significant for users who want to stay up-to-date on the latest news as it happens.

How to Create A News App Like CNN?

Followings are the essential steps you can follow to create an app like CNN News.

Brainstorm the Ideas

When brainstorming the ideas for your news app, you have to consider what type of news you want to consider (e.g., national, local, international, politics, sports, entertainment, and so on). It would help to focus on what features you want to integrate (e.g., social media integration, personalized recommendations, and video content).

Also, focus on your target audience, like baby boomers, sports fans, millennials, and business professionals.

Market Research

Conduct Market research to address your target audience’s needs, preferences, and behavior while consuming news. It can be conducted via surveys, focus groups, or online research. Moreover, assess the competition to comprehend the features they offer, how they market their application, and what sets your app apart.

Prototyping

In this step of CNN News app development, you need to create a prototype of your news app to test its features, functionality, and user experience. It can be done using wireframes, mockups, or simple MVP (minimal viable product) that consider the core functionalities of your app.

UI And UX Designing

Designing the app’s user interface (UI) and experience (UX) to make sure the app is visually appealing, intuitive to use, and easy to navigate. It considers developing a consistent designing language, selecting colour schemes, choosing fonts, and designing the app’s visual elements (icons, images, and buttons).

Coding

Create the app’s backend infrastructure, develop APIs, and create the font-end interface using your preferred programming language and techniques is another key steps of CNN News app development. It involves writing code, testing it, and debugging any glitches.

Testing

Conducting robust testing of the app to address the glitches or issues is another News app development process. It can be done by manual testing, automated testing, or integration of both. Test the news app on multiple devices and operating systems to ensure it is compatible with several platforms.

Release

Once the app is thoroughly tested and ready for release, publish it on the app stores like Google play store or Apple play store. You must start to promote your app among the target audience.

It considers developing a marketing strategy and creating promotional materials such as descriptions, videos, and app screenshots). It would be best to contact media outlets and influencers to promote your app.

Maintenance and Support

After releasing the app, you must continue offering maintenance and support to ensure the app is running smoothly and any glitches that arise are identified promptly. It considers monitoring user feedback, updating the app’s features, fixing issues or bugs, and offering the best customer support to users.

How Much Does It Cost to Build An App Like CNN News?

It isn’t easy to estimate the exact cost of App development like CNN News as it relies on different factors. But, to give you a rough idea, the cost of developing an app like CNN News can range from $5000-$50000 or much more.

The cost can also vary depending on the development type, development platform, development team, and the features you want to integrate into creating an app like CNN News. For instance, developing an app for both iOS and Android platforms can increase the cost; hence you can focus on developing a native app instead using a hybrid app.

But, to get a rough estimation, it can be estimated that a mobile news app with essential features and a single platform will cost approximately $25000-$35000. In contrast, the app with advanced features and two platforms will cost about $50000-$60000.

It is best to hire mobile app developer to get an accurate estimate for developing an app like CNN. They can offer you a depth breakdown of the costs involved based on your specific needs and support you to plan and budget your project.

Factors Affecting Your News App Development Cost

The cost to create a news app like CNN can vary depending on several factors that are discussed as given below:

Type of News App

The type of news app you want to develop can have a broader impact on the cost. A simple news aggregator app that pulls content from different sources may be less expensive than a full-featured news app. It considers live streaming, personalized news recommendations, and original content.

Some other features that can affect the cost of a news app consider the ability to save articles for offline readings, comments, share, bookmarks, and search bar features.

News App Development Platform

The platform you select to develop your app can affect the development cost of App development like CNN News. Developing an app on different platforms like Android and iOS may need more time and resources than developing one for a single platform.

Moreover, the cost can vary depending on the technologies and tools used to develop the app.

For instance, building an app using a cross-platform development framework such as React Native or Flutter can be less costly than developing separate apps for each platform using native development tools.

Development Type

Whether you choose to develop a native app or a hybrid app, it may affect the CNN News app cost. Native apps are commonly expensive but provide better performance and a seamless user experience.

Because they are developed using native programming language and development techniques specific to each app development platform.

Conversely, hybrid apps are less expensive but may have limitations in terms of performance and functionality. Because these apps are developed using the web technologies such as JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. It is wrapped in a native container to perform on multiple platforms.

News App Development Team

The size and expertise of the development team can affect the cost of app development like CNN News. Hire mobile app developer with more experience and expertise will generally cost more than working with a more minor or less experienced team.

The development team can consider a project manager, developers, designers, quality assurance engineers, and other professionals relied on the project’s complexity.

News App Features

The feature you want to consider in your app may affect the CNN News app cost. Some features can be highly complex to develop compared to other apps, live streaming, and personalized news recommendations.

Moreover, the cost can increase if you want to integrate an app with third-party services or APIs like news sources or social media platforms.

Overall, the cost of App development like CNN News can vary widely depending on factors and other variables like content management system, CNN News app design, and server infrastructure.

Hence, consulting with a professional Mobile App development Company is better for finding more accurate estimations according to specific project requirements.

Tech Stack For Developing News Apps like CNN

The tech stack is the inclusive IT framework with overall apps like CNN News. Following are the given technology that are used to develop an app like CNN news.

How Can We Help You?

eBizneeds is one of the recognized app development companies in different markets. Our experience app development team assists you from brainstorming ideas to post-release app maintenance.

You can also contact our business analyst team to discuss your vision and planning for the app to find the right advice and thus make feasible decisions.

Conclusion

Developing a news app like CNN can offer more comprehensive benefits such as increased user engagement, News monetization opportunities, valuable data and analytics, brand loyalty, wider audience reach, and competitive benefits.

To develop a successful news app, it is significant to define the app’s features and purposes, choose the right development platforms and technology, design a better user interface design, create the app with a team of experienced developers, release an app on the app stores, and promote the app using different marketing channels.

Using the feasible strategy and execution, you can develop a news app that offers users a customized and convenient news experience.

FAQs

Q1. What is CNN?

CNN (Cable News Network) is a significant news company that offers news coverage across different radio, television, and digital media platforms. CNN’s digital platform considers a news website, mobile app, and social media channels, offering users updated news coverage, live streaming, and customized news recommendations.

Q2. How Much Does It Cost to Build A News App?

The CNN News app cost can differ as it relies on several factors, such as development type, development platform, development team, and features you want to integrate. A simple news aggregator app that collects news from different sources can cost between $20,000 to $50,000.

Conversely, a full-functionality app with original content, live streaming, and customized news recommendations can cost upwards of $200,000 or much more.

Q3. Why Develop My App like CNN News?

Developing my app can offer different benefits like control over content distribution, push notifications, better user experience, and app store optimization. With your news app, you have complete control over the content distribution and can ensure your users get better quality and relevant content.

A news app can offer a better user experience than browsing news websites on a mobile browser with customized content and features like push notifications. App store optimization can aid in gaining the transparency and ranking of your app in the app stores and influencing more users.

Q4. How Much Do Mobile App Developers Charge to Build An App like CNN News in the US?

Mobile app developers in the USA may commonly charge an hourly rate ranging from $100 to $250 or more, depending on their level of experience and expertise. The CNN News app cost varies greatly depending on the above-discussed factors. Hence, it is required to consult with an experienced Mobile App development Company to find an accurate estimate according to specific needs.

Naveen Khanna

Naveen Khanna is the CEO of eBizneeds, a company renowned for its bespoke web and mobile app development. By delivering high-end modern solutions all over the globe, Naveen takes pleasure in sharing his rich experiences and views on emerging technological trends. He has worked in many domains, from education, entertainment, banking, manufacturing, healthcare, and real estate, sharing rich experience in delivering innovative solutions.