App stories

App stories bring the familiar story format, a row of tappable, visual content cards, into your mobile app and put its content under your control in the Netmera Panel. Your development team builds the story area once. Each story is a Netmera widget, so marketing and CRM teams can launch, refresh, and rotate stories on their own schedule, independent of app releases.

Use app stories for campaign launches, new product highlights, onboarding tips, seasonal offers, and any message that works best as a short, visual, swipeable experience.

How it works

App stories combine an interface your app owns with content Netmera serves.

Layer	Owner	Responsibility
Story area	App development team	Builds the story interface in the app and calls the Netmera SDK method that displays widget content.
Story content	Marketing or CRM team	Designs each story as a widget in the Netmera Panel and keeps its content up to date.

When a user opens a story, the SDK loads the widget linked to that story and displays it in the story area. Because the content lives in Netmera, every content change reaches the app without a new version in the App Store or Google Play.

Set up app stories

1

Implement the SDK method

Your development team adds the SDK method that displays a widget by its URL. Use the method that matches your app's platform.

Platform	Method	Available from
Native iOS (Swift)	Netmera.displayContent(forWidgetURL:)	iOS Swift SDK v4.20.0
Native Android	Netmera.displayWidget	Android SDK v4.16.0
React Native	Netmera.displayWidgetContent	React Native SDK v2.3.0

Native iOS (Swift)

Display the widget with the SDK's built-in presentation:

guard let url = URL(string: widgetUrlString) else { return }
Netmera.displayContent(forWidgetURL: url)

To render the widget inside your own story container, pass the app's WKWebView. Close the container in the onCloseRequested closure, which runs when the widget asks to close or opens a link or deeplink:

Netmera.displayContent(forWidgetURL: url, in: webView) { [weak self] in
    self?.dismiss(animated: true)
}

For details, see Display a widget by URL.

Native Android

Display the widget with the SDK's built-in presentation:

Netmera.displayWidget(url)

To render the widget inside your own story container, pass the app's WebView:

val webView = findViewById<WebView>(R.id.web_view)
Netmera.displayWidget(url, webView, object : NetmeraWebViewCallback {
    override fun shouldOverrideUrlLoading(view: WebView, url: String): Boolean = false
    override fun onPageLoaded(view: WebView, url: String) {}
    override fun onPageCommitVisible(view: WebView, url: String) {}
})

For details, see the Android SDK changelog.

React Native

Display the widget with the SDK's built-in presentation:

Netmera.displayWidgetContent('https://...');

For details, see Display widget by URL.

2

Create a widget for each story

In the Netmera Panel, create a separate widget for every story you want to show. Design each widget for the size and orientation of the story area in your app, and preview it on mobile before saving.

Reflect the story order and topic in the widget name. A consistent naming pattern makes the stories easy to find on the Widgets dashboard and easy to map in the next step. For example:

• App Story – 1. Story – Summer campaign

• App Story – 2. Story – New arrivals

• App Story – 3. Story – Loyalty program

For layout and content options, see Design widget layout and Widget elements reference. To add buttons, deeplinks, or follow-up actions inside a story, see Configure widget actions and validation.

3

Connect each widget to a story in the app

Collect the URL of each story widget and share it with your development team:

1. Open the Widgets dashboard.

2. Find the story widget with Search.

3. Open the widget's actions menu and select Copy link.

The development team passes each URL to the SDK method for the matching story position. This mapping is done once. After that, the story area is connected to its Netmera widgets.

Story position	Widget	Passed to the SDK method
1	App Story – 1. Story	URL of the first story widget
2	App Story – 2. Story	URL of the second story widget
3	App Story – 3. Story	URL of the third story widget

The mapping defines how many stories the app shows. Content changes never need a release, but adding a new story position does, unless your development team loads the widget URLs from a remote source.

4

Manage stories from Netmera

Once the mapping is in place, you run the story area from the Netmera Panel. Open the widget linked to a story, update its content, and save it. The updated story reaches users the next time they open it.

To replace a story with a new campaign, edit the widget that is already mapped to that position. Duplicate creates a new widget with a new URL, which the app is not connected to. Use duplicates to keep a copy of a previous story, not to publish the next one.

Measure story performance

Story widgets use Netmera's widget analytics, so you can see how each story performs and which content drives action. Review impressions and interactions in Analyze widget performance. To track story-specific interactions, such as a product tap inside a story, see Track custom widget events.

Why manage stories with Netmera

Benefit	What it means for your team
Release-independent content	Story content is not tied to app versions or release operations. Marketing teams publish on the campaign calendar, not the release calendar.
Instant updates	Changes to a story widget reach the stories in the app as soon as the widget is saved.
Performance insight	Netmera analytics shows how each story performs, so the strongest content can stay in the strip and weaker stories can be replaced quickly.
One design toolset	Stories use the same widget editor, elements, and actions as other Netmera widgets.

Related pages

• Widgets

• Build a widget

• Analyze widget performance

• Netmera developer guide