The Client
Citizen TV is one of the most popular news channels in Kenya and belongs to the largest media house in East Africa, Royal Media Services Ltd. Their main focus is on local programmes and they mostly broadcast in English and Swahili. The television was launched in the year 1999 and relaunched in June 2006. With a total reach of more than 90%, Citizen TV daily touches the lives of people at all corners of the country irrespective of their socioeconomic background, gender and age.
The Requirement
Citizen TV wanted to increase its market share and improve its brand value by leveraging the latest technologies to deliver news content using a web portal.
The Challenge
Citizen TV was already a
leader in the Kenyan media industry. Individually, the television had the
largest market share and is the largest media house in East Africa.
We identified that the new
solution should not only give the media giant a modern face but also help them
to deliver news to the ever-growing viewer base, without any interruption.
The Solution
Based on the requirement, feasibility and the prevailing trend in the market, our team swiftly identified that developing a solution based on WordPress, one of the most powerful CMS software existing today, would be the best bet for the requirement. WordPress is an open-source CMS software that is more than capable to handle various types of media and articles.
With WordPress,
scalability will not be a problem since its robust architecture is ideal for
handling traffic at a large scale. The WordPress features like plugins,
customization options, security, search engine compatibility, user management,
and its ability to manage content from the dashboard are few of the many
reasons why we decided to develop a solution based on this popular CMS
platform.
To enable the fast delivery of content, we chose a WordPress dedicated hosting service, from WPEngine, as part of the solution.
The solution also features a Live TV that streams the latest news and programmes, real-time. Using simple codes, our team was able to integrate the component into the web portal. The Live TV works flawlessly with the overall design of the website and renders perfectly on all screens.
The client’s business model demanded that the solution we develop must help them in enhancing their revenue, improving their reach, brand building and bettering their existing reputation. Based on these objectives, our UX team developed a user experience strategy that is creative and capable enough to strengthen the client’s business model.
Features
Homepage
The homepage is designed with an emphasis on delivering the latest news. The categorization of news content helps the audience to find the latest happenings in their favourite field, easily.
News page
The specially designed news page with all its features helps the audience to read the content quickly and easily. We took extra care in the placement of images, font selection and line spacing to improve readability.
Article share
To enable the audience to share the news that they have read, our team developed a feature to share an article directly from the news page. This feature helps the audience to share the news with the least number of clicks. News articles can be shared directly to social media, or to people through WhatsApp or e-mail.
Live TV
The live TV helps the readers to watch live telecast from anywhere at any time. The list of upcoming shows and programmes are also listed on the same page to help the visitors.
Key Technologies
WordPress , PHP , MySQL , jQuery 1.10.2 , JavaScript Framework
The Result
The new digital face helped Citizen TV to confirm their superiority in delivering unbiased news. With the new web portal, now the news is accessible by anyone with an internet connection. The solution enabled Citizen TV to widen their reach, even to areas where traditional medias failed to penetrate. Citizen now has an additional medium for revenue generation and the solution has also helped them with brand building.
