The NRA App

I’ve been bugging folks at NRA that they need to do apps for iOS and Android apps for a while now. Looks like they’ve gotten around to producing one. Essentially it acts as a portal to NRA News, ILA alerts, and a lot of NRA’s social media efforts. As a just out of the gate app, I’d give a B-. Some things I’d change:

• Make a version that is iPad/Tablet enabled.
• Allow live viewing of NRA News, though it may do that. I’ll have to see when the show rolls around. But judging from what I see now, it does not have such a feature.
• Donate/Join/Vote/Contact should happen either in app, or go to highly mobile optimized sites. It looks fine from my iPad, but from my iPhone it’s not something that could be done easily.
• It should be using iOS push to get critical time sensitive information out to members. Members have to approve this on their devices.
• The “Near Me” feature is a good thing to have, and probably the best feature of the App, but the information provided is very raw. It needs a bit more refinement. For instance, when I search on clubs and associations, I get a lot of police clubs. Those aren’t relevant to me. Some of the information seems to be incomplete, such as local Friends of the NRA events, and I don’t see a complete list of matches in the area.
• Rep Finder should also be under “Take Action”

In short, I think this is a good start, but it could be a lot better. In general, I feel the app could be better organized. It makes some assumptions that you understand how NRA is structured. For instance, the uninitiated aren’t going to know what “ILA Alerts” are, and that the NRA Blog is only run by a subset of NRA, and is generally non-political.

I’d think a lot bigger on an app than just to act as a portal for various efforts NRA is already doing. It’s essentially a portal, but I don’t really feel it’s engaging.