While the world is growing increasingly mobile, almost all of that time is spent on apps (88%) instead of browsers.

Apps

• Offer a more branded, seamless experience
• Keep people more engaged with features like notifications, personalization, and offline access
• Develop more loyal audiences because they don’t depend on Search

Regardless of how you earn revenue, apps offer unique ways to earn even more revenue:

• Ad revenue: personalization allows for more accurate ads targeting
• Reader revenue: more time spent means more opportunities to offer subscriptions, donations, or memberships

Building a mobile app isn’t easy for most news organizations. If you’re considering launching an app, ask yourself:

• Resources: Does your organization have engineering and product talent? If not, can you hire an employee or contractor?
  
  
• Technical expertise: If you have the right talent, do they know multiple coding languages that might be used for iOS and Android?
  
  
• Data: Do you already collect, analyze, and use data about your audience?

What is the Flutter News Toolkit?

The Flutter News Toolkit helps news organizations reduce the time, resources, and talent needed to build news apps for both iOS and Android.

Just like how Google Docs has templates for resumes, where you can easily remove lines or add new sections, the Flutter News Toolkit is a template for mobile news apps. Publishers have full control over their apps, but can still get started quickly.

The Flutter News Toolkit

• Includes common design, features, and best practices found across news apps
• Helps you publish your app across iOS, Android, and other platforms, all from one place
• Easily integrates with Google Ad Manager and AdMob and in-app purchases for subscriptions

Get started with the Flutter News Toolkit

1. Tell your developer you’d like to create an app using the Flutter News Toolkit, and link them to the Github library and Quick Start video
2. Email us if you need recommendations on agencies to help launch or customize your app

The Flutter News Toolkit allows you to have common design, features, and best practices found across news apps, like:

• Using push notifications to encourage app visits
• Recommending content with recirculation sections to increase engagement
• Adding newsletter sign-ups across your app to grow newsletter subscribers

News organizations have used Flutter to:

• Save time. The Standard News reported time savings of up to 80%.
• Grow ad revenue. Hespress reported 50% growth in ad revenue.