Launches

Arabian Gulf Business Insight launches on Pugpig Bolt using brand new timeline layouts feature for complete control over content curation

The business news platform for the Middle East and North Africa, Arabian Gulf Business Insight, has launched a brand new app on Pugpig Bolt and is one of the first to use Bolt’s new timeline layouts plugin. Find out more about how the app build went.

24th November 2023

The business news platform for the Middle East and North Africa, Arabian Gulf Business Insight (AGBI), has launched a brand new app on Pugpig Bolt and is one of the first to use Bolt’s new timeline layouts plugin.

Timeline layouts is a tool that comes with a whole new set of capabilities that allows AGBI to completely control the layout of content on the timelines.

In this case, they’re using specially designed blocks, side scrollers, and strategically placed hero stories to break up the latest news feed into various sections.

The result is an incredibly engaging latest news feed that not only looks great, but gives AGBI much greater control over the flexibility of what their content looks like and where it’s placed on the timeline.

The ‘trending’ and ‘best of AGBI’ side scrollers, for example, are great examples of how AGBI is surfacing an even richer variety of content in an engaging and visually appealing way.

Bringing custom HTML elements into the app

Another feature worth mentioning here is the closing prices scroller across the top of the app which is done through Bolt’s ability to bring custom HTML elements from AGBI into the app. In this case, stock prices are pulled from their website and updated daily.

Throughout the project, we collaborated with our friends over at Human Made to build on our WordPress importer in order to synchronise content across website and app.

Work here centred on the content feeds, including tag and author taxonomies, correct tagging and attribution of images, videos, and more. Iteration by iteration, we worked closely with Human Made until we achieved the final look and feel of the app.

Tom Willmot, CEO at Human Made said: “We are proud to partner with Pugpig to expand AGBI’s business news platforms with a world-class native mobile experience.

“Pugpig’s innovative technology and expertise bringing leading editorial and magazine experiences to mobile paired perfectly with Human Made’s investments and experience building world-class publishing platforms on open source technology like WordPress.

“We look forward to continuing to work closely with Pugpig to help AGBI deliver important stories, and authoritative analysis to the MENA region.”

The AGBI app makes use of various integrations including Chartbeat for publisher focused, real time analytics and Google Ad Manager.

The app, we hope you’ll agree, looks fantastic and we’re already looking forward to getting stuck into phase two of work with AGBI, which will focus on fleshing out those commercial capabilities in the form of sponsored content.

Dom Easter, Customer Director at Pugpig said:

“It has been an absolute pleasure working with the teams at AGBI and Human Made. Personally, I really love the visual look of the app and want to give a big shout out to Team Pugpig who worked tirelessly on getting the look and feel of the app spot on and bringing our new timeline layout capabilities to life.

“This is an exciting time for us here at Pugpig as we launch more products in the MENA region and I hope to see plenty more alongside AGBI in the future.”

Hector Arthur, Chief Strategy Officer at AGBI said:

“This project ran on rails and we are delighted with the outcome. As the leading business news publisher in the MENA region, AGBI caters to a discerning audience and this mobile app sets the new benchmark in terms of user experience, as well as providing a great way for us to maintain an always-on connection with our readers to ensure that they never miss an important story.

“We pick our partners very carefully and it’s been terrific to work with Pugpig and Human Made, two top-tier technology companies, to bring this product to market.”

We also collaborated with AGBI’s UX/UI partners over at Furthermore, who were instrumental in the design of the app.

Steve Johnson, Director at Furthermore said:

“We enjoyed working with Pugpig and Human Made to translate the AGBI web experience to the new native app. Consistency of experience across platforms is very important when growing a new brand, so maintaining the seamless user experience and elegant look and feel of the website was crucial for us.

“Thankfully, Pugpig and Human Made made it easy and we couldn’t be happier with the end result. We are looking forward to continuing to work together to help AGBI usher in a new era of business journalism for the MENA region.”

The app is available to download on iOS and Android. Don’t forget to get in touch if you’d like more details on anything mentioned in this post or you’d like to get a demo.