Product Improvement: InShorts News
Introduction
InShorts is a news stories app that gives quick 60-word summaries of news from different sources. This is one app on my phone which has a lot of potential to become a great app but limited functionality and some frustrating features make it one of the worst apps on my phone.
But, before we can look at the problems in the app, I would like to discuss the app’s customers briefly to understand their psyche and then present the pain points in their customer journey.
Customers
The City Dweller — Always in a hurry and wants a quick run-down of daily headlines
Behaviours:
· Early morning commute to office in peak traffic hours
· Short attention span while reading articles
· Stay updated on current affairs but not spend too much time reading the newspaper
· Discuss latest news with peers while at office and other social settings
Needs and Goals:
· News in short snippets giving a quick dump on the story
· Seek relevant news based on interest
· Keep updated on major headlines everyday
· A discussion platform to enable communication
The News Geek — Wants an aggregation of all the news sources in one place
Behaviours:
· Addicted to reading news and analysis around it
· Routinely read major headlines, editorials across different publishing houses
· Make informed choices basis the economic and political landscape
· Shifting to digital medium
· Discuss latest news with peers while at office and other social settings
Needs and Goals:
· News aggregated from multiple sources
· In-depth analysis of the latest news to build an understanding around the issue
· Digital solution for regular updates personalised to them
· A discussion platform to enable communication
Analysis and Customer Pain Points
Inshorts is primarily serving ‘The City Dweller’, with its secondary target segment being ‘The News Geek’. While analysing the user journeys for both the user groups, I found significant gaps that would frustrate a user.
Issues:
1. Constant Notifications — One of the most annoying features of the Inshorts app is its notification feature. The app constantly bombards the user’s phone with news notifications. The volume of notifications sent out is cumbersome as no user really needs constant updates. The notifications end up annoying a user to an extent that people either uninstall the app or disable the notifications.
2. Lack of news dashboard for headlines — One of the most important needs of a ‘City Dweller’ is to seek relevant news based on interest quickly. Although, the app asks for user’s interest while onboarding to tailor news to different users, there is no way to see all the top headlines at one place. Swiping through news can be overwhelming esp. when user is unable to find relevant news.
3. Lack of analysis around major headlines — ‘The News Geek’ highly values analysis around major news. InShorts only gives a link to the original article. A user cannot look for related news, let alone analysis around that news. This is especially disheartening for a user as digital news platforms are capable of achieving this but still don’t do it.
4. Complex Personalisation options — Post onboarding it is extremely difficult to tune personalisation settings around topics interested and the level of detail required for each topic. The option to do the same comes in the menu, where a user can change among ‘All News’, ‘Major News’ and ‘No News’ for 17 categories. This becomes overwhelming for the user and hampers the quality of news delivered to the user.
5. Categorization by region — Although, InShorts provides categorisation basis topics like Politics, India, Science etc. There is no way to specifically read local and regional news. InShorts does source a lot of its news at hyperlocal level but it is shown at random.
6. Vernacular Language support — A lot of InShort’s customers reside in Tier-2, Tier-3 and rural areas. With no vernacular support of languages like Tamil, Kannada, Punjabi etc., the customer is left wanting for regional content on the app.
7. Ability to discuss news articles — InShorts currently does not allow users to discuss news articles on the platform. The only way someone can do this is by sharing the article over Whatsapp or other messaging apps. The inability to get views and provide an opinion on a news article greatly hinders the experience.
Solutions:
1. An elaborate notification and news bulletin system –
a. The News Bulletin — InShorts can create an elaborate list of headlines personalised to the user’s taste. This bulletin would be available under options in menu. A user can click on any headline to open the story and swipe to next stories.
b. Notifications — Now, instead of sending out notifications for each news story, the app can send out notification of the latest bulletin at times when user is most likely to read news like during morning commute hours, lunch time or before going to bed.
2. InShorts Local –
a. Support for vernacular language — With InShorts already sourcing hyperlocal news based on user’s location, adding vernacular support for regional languages will help in improving reach of these stories. This would improve user acquisition and retention.
b. Categorization based on geography — InShorts must also add a new level of categorization basis the geography. The user should be able to select local and regional news as well.
3. ‘InShorts IQ’ — A new series by InShorts called ‘InShorts IQ’ where InShorts does an in-depth analysis of a particularly famous topic/news. It would discuss the ‘What’, ‘Why’, ‘When’, ‘Where’, ‘Who’ and ‘How’ about the topic/news.
4. Easy Personalisation — In order to make personalisation easier, the 17 categories can be grouped into 4 categories. The user now has to adjust the level of news required for just 4 categories instead of 17. But they can still fine tune the level of news required in sub-categories under each category.
5. InShorts Panchayat — Create an open forum for the users to discuss latest news, publish local updates and fulfil customer’s desire to discuss news with their peers.
a. In-Line Forum Threads — Give the customer to open new forum threads on both the article as a whole and on specific lines of the article. The user can also navigate to forum from the options menu or by tapping on the forum button on the article.
b. InShorts Baton — Users can post local updates around traffic, protests etc. on the forum. If other users have subscribed to local batons, they get notifications about these updates based on their geo-location.
c. InShorts Reverse Tags — Add ability for the user to share specific lines from the articles to twitter, reddit etc. and enable discussion on external forums.
d. InShorts Shots — To create a buzzing forum, design an incentive system which awards points i.e., ‘shots’ for each action the user does. For example — 10 shots for starting a new forum, 30 shots for commenting and discussing, 20 shots for posting updates etc. These shots would then create a hierarchical community. Greater the number of shots better the reputation in the community.
Prioritization:
Based on the above table, InShorts must start of by improving its core features such as notifications, vernacular support and easy personalisation. Post that they must start expanding their features starting on with the InShorts Panchayat and then implementing InShortsIQ.
Risks:
1. Providing vernacular support for languages across India may require significant effort for InShorts w.r.t. sourcing the news.
2. InShorts Panchayat, although provides a healthy community to discuss news, post updates, also becomes a place for frauds, cyberbullying etc. InShorts would have to look at ways to mediate the platform at low costs.
3. The news bulletin may be a concise way to showcase news headlines but integrating it into notifications may not generate enough interest for the user to click the notification and open the bulletin. This feature would require testing to analyse customer behaviour and retention rates.
