After the successful launch of the Carsguide M-Site, News Digital Media decided to roll out an off-deck mobile site that incorporated their large range of news, information and entertainment content services.
The Challenge
Content was to be structured and presented in a familiar way so that news.com.au online users could easily locate and quickly access their favourite sections.
In order to gather accurate demographic information for site tracking and ad serving users fi rst registered online. A homepage customisation engine then would send the user their custom homepage URL via SMS.
The service would be off-deck, and open to a wide range of both 2G and 3G mobiles.
The Digital Business Solution
Each feed was assigned its own colour palette so that sections conform to their familiar online counterpart. A number of template layouts were designed for content display based on the feed type.
At the backend, the application scans through over 60 RSS feeds Publisherevery minute, monitoring for content additions and changes. The content is read in and stored locally so that users can continue to view articles long after they are removed from the feeds.
Due to the diversity of their sources, the backend application needed to be capable of handling a variety of RSS feed structures and content, including custom XML extensions, and conform these to a standard internal content type.
For the online homepage customisation engine, Hyro developed a dynamic Ajax-based solution that incorporated live content. Users can add and remove homepage sections, with changes immediately reflected in a phone example on-screen. Once satisfi ed, users register and are sent an SMS with their custom homepage URL.
Success Achieved
- The online registration model has received high uptake.
- “Extending the NEWS.com.au service to people who are out and about and may not have access to a newspaper or computer to keep up to date with breaking news is a real achievement for our business”
Sigrid Kirk, NEWS.com.au Group Publisher