The Challenge
As Morocco’s first and most-visited online news platform, Hespress was ready to expand beyond its Arabic readership by offering an English-language app to reach international audiences and the Moroccan diaspora.
But they faced a series of obstacles that made a fast, cost-effective launch difficult. Building separate iOS and Android apps would have consumed too much time and resources, and the team needed a solution that could guarantee speed, scalability, and performance without compromising on user experience. At the same time, Hespress wanted to differentiate themselves in a crowded media landscape by ensuring their app could stand up to high reader expectations.
Key challenges included:
- Limited Timeline: The app needed to be live in just a few weeks to capture a growing audience.
- Cross-Platform Complexity: Separate iOS and Android builds would double development and maintenance costs.
- Performance Concerns: Readers expected lightning-fast load times and reliable push notifications.
- Ad-Blocker Disruption: Hespress needed a way to serve updates and content effectively even with ad blockers in play.
- Team Readiness: Internal developers were familiar with native platforms, but not yet with Flutter or Dart.
Our Solution
To meet these challenges, Hespress partnered with VGV and selected the Flutter News Toolkit as the foundation for its app strategy. This approach was chosen for its speed, scalability, and ability to reduce costs while ensuring performance across platforms—and it emphasized long-term sustainability so Hespress could continue evolving its digital products after launch. Together, we:
- Used the Flutter News Toolkit to accelerate development with a pre-built, news-focused architecture.
- Consolidated development into a single cross-platform codebase for iOS and Android.
- Established a future-proof design system with reusable components and flexible layouts.
- Equipped Hespress’s team with Flutter expertise to manage ongoing development.
- Reduced launch time and long-term maintenance costs through efficient tooling.
"VGV was responsive to our needs and had an optimized workflow that made the whole process effortless. We were pleased with how the team made sure the final product met our expectations and did the extra work to finalize all the details at the point of launch.” -Yassin Bendaoud, Social Media Manager, Hespress
How We Did It
The project was executed as a tightly managed six-week engagement, with VGV guiding the Hespress team through a collaborative and hands-on process. The focus was on execution excellence—taking the strategic plan and breaking it into actionable, efficient steps.
This included:
- Customizing the Flutter News Toolkit to fit Hespress’s brand and editorial needs.
- Training Hespress engineers in Dart and Flutter to build confidence and capability.
- Aligning Figma designs directly with Flutter code to streamline handoffs.
- Applying agile project management to prioritize features and drive iteration.
- Delivering and testing critical features—such as push notifications, instant updates, and optimized performance—before expanding functionality.
"VGV was responsive to our needs and had an optimized workflow that made the whole process effortless. We were pleased with how the team made sure the final product met our expectations and did the extra work to finalize all the details at the point of launch.” -Yassin Bendaoud, Social Media Manager, Hespress
The Result
- Launched a polished iOS and Android app in just six weeks.
- Engaged readers with faster load times, push notifications, and intuitive design.
- Streamlined operations with one codebase instead of two.
- Prepared internal teams to expand features like video, personalization, and new content formats.
