At the heart of Mediacorp’s CNA app revamp was a simple idea: The homepage should not be a static gateway. It should be a flexible, user-shaped experience that helps audiences discover more, engage more deeply, and move easily across formats.

CNA’s platforms had grown rich in content and storytelling formats, but user research showed rising friction.

Many readers stopped at the Top Stories band instead of scrolling further. Long-form journalism had to compete with cluttered layouts, and formats such as podcasts, short-form vertical video, and visual stories were growing but remained too fragmented within the overall experience.

Rather than launch a separate product, CNA chose to evolve its existing app to focus on user control and relevance. The defining move was a customisable homepage that gave users meaningful control over what they saw without the friction of forced logins.

By storing preferences locally, CNA introduced personalisation in a way that felt intuitive, lightweight, and trustworthy.

Home is where the habit is

This matters because the homepage is where habit begins.

A customisable homepage gave users stronger ownership of their news journey while exposing them to a broader mix of stories and formats. It shifted the homepage from a passive entry point to a more dynamic product surface; one designed to build engagement, not just capture clicks.

The redesign, which covered both the CNA app and Web site, was guided by extensive research,  including surveys, heat maps, click-tracking, and one-on-one usability interviews.

Those insights shaped the product’s information architecture, navigation, and design language. Cleaner layouts, modernised typography, and improved readability were all aimed at encouraging users to go beyond the headline layer.

Rapid results

The results were immediate.

On mobile Web, the proportion of users who scrolled beyond the Top Stories band increased by 10.7 percentage points. Overall scroll depth also improved by nearly 11 percentage points, showing users were moving deeper into the page and engaging with more of CNA’s journalism.

The impact of homepage customisation was just as clear on the app. After its launch, homepage clicks per user per day increased by 54%, showing users were not just tolerating personalisation but actively using it to explore more content.

Just as importantly, the iteration unified CNA’s growing range of storytelling formats. A redesigned Listen hub and floating audio player allowed users to browse while listening, helping average monthly podcast plays rise 84% year-on-year.

Short-form vertical videos though vastly outnumbered by our strong supply of news videos, and documentaries and current affairs programmes on demand, made for 30% of overall video views on the site, with views per unique viewer 3.75 times higher than horizontal video.

Visual Stories, our visual storytelling format, also showed strong engagement, with users viewing an average of 11 frames per visit.

This was not a cosmetic refresh. It was a strategic evolution of our core news product, anchored by homepage customisation and designed to drive deeper reading, broader discovery, and stronger cross-format engagement.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .