WordPress allows you to build your website easily and opens up access to a whole world of stunning themes and powerful plugins. If you’re looking for a way to grow your business with a website, WordPress is the ultimate solution.
There are ample online marketing techniques that allow you to scale your website traffic. However, when it comes to having an online platform to connect with your audience, websites are not alone.
Mobile apps have emerged as a powerful interface of late. Since smartphones are now ubiquitous, apps have seen a natural rise in general preference and popularity when compared to websites.
Generally, businesses look at apps as an alternative to websites. This is an incorrect way to look at websites and apps. Both have their own unique advantages in growing your online presence.
Understanding the challenge of app development
So both websites and apps are important. We already have WordPress to create a powerful website.
What about mobile apps? How can we create an app just as easily as we create a WordPress site?
Here’s the challenge: app development is not that simple. You can launch a website with a powerful and easy-to-manage CMS like WordPress. App development though takes time, costs a lot more money, and requires a team with storied technical experience.
Businesses generally work with agencies or create an in-house development team to build an app. Both these prospects are expensive, tedious, and long.
So how can you circumvent this challenge of app development? The solution is to use powerful and fast DIY app builders.
As a WordPress site owner, you can choose from a ton of no-code options to make a powerful mobile app. AppMySite is one such option.
Building an app with an app builder: A brief guide
Let’s say you decide to build an app with AppMySite. The process is simple and enables you to get a ready-to-publish app.
To get started, you need to create an account on the platform. Here’s how it works:
- Design: Start by designing your app’s crucial assets. This includes the icon, splash screen, onboarding screens, and the home screen. You can also set a color theme that would be followed across the app.
- Connect: The next step is connecting your site to your app. The process is fairly simple and explained thoroughly on the Connectivity screen. This step essentially populates your app with your website’s content.
- Preview: Once your website and app are connected, you can preview your app. You’ll be able to see all your website content in Android and iOS device emulators. In the emulators, you can preview and test the working of your app completely.
- Download: When you’re happy with your app, you can download it. For Android, you can download the APK and AAB builds. For iOS, you can download an IPA build. Then proceed to submit the app to the app stores.
How can a mobile app grow your WordPress website?
Once you have a live app on the app stores, the next question is how you can use it to grow your website.
An app is essentially a digital asset for your business, just like your website. In isolation, it only has limited potential. However, it can work brilliantly if paired and marketed shrewdly along with the website.
The following sections show how a mobile app can grow your WordPress website.
#1: A new channel for marketing
Websites are generally the first point of contact for new visitors and customers. However, user retention on websites is low because of a lack of accessibility.
Mobile users have to navigate to a browser to open a website. Even if you manage to attract a large audience over mobile, it may not necessarily translate into decent retention.
In short, you’re always in a position where you need to attract a lot of new customers because of poor retention rates.
Apps can help you here. Compared to websites, apps are much more accessible. A new customer can arrive on your website and graduate to downloading your app.
Since apps are instantly accessible, user retention becomes much easier. Additionally, you can use push notifications to create further engagement.
Apps can be viewed as a more accessible extension of a website. With better retention, you can make your marketing campaigns more efficient.
#2: Gain an edge over your competitors
There are roughly 190 million active websites online. On the other hand, the number of apps on Google Play and App Store total to around 2.87 million and 1.95 million respectively.
Websites outnumber apps greatly. And since we know that the preference for apps is growing, this suggests a gap in the market. Many websites can benefit from starting an app, but the challenges along the way act as an obstacle.
The app market is perfect for WordPress site owners because of lower competition. A website generally competes with a large number of other sites for the same audience across similar channels.
Starting an app places a website brand in a new channel where competition is much lower. Additionally, if your competitors don’t have an appetite to start and grow a mobile app, you can quickly capture an audience and establish your brand.
#3: Establish trust and reliability
Apps are preferred over websites because they’re fast, accessible, and offer an overall better user experience.
All these factors contribute to brands that have mobile apps to be more trusted and reliable.
Think of any well-known mainstream brand, and you’ll find that it has a live app on the app stores. It is important to understand the ability of apps to grow loyalty and trust in an audience.
As an app grows your brand’s reliability, the benefits for your website are obvious. Overall growth in your brand’s appeal will drive more traffic to your website and give it greater visibility and authority.
In conclusion
An app can add a new dimension to your online business. Besides enhancing your mobile presence, an app can also grow the brand value and reliability of your website. It is for this simple reason many top websites eventually branch out and launch their own app.
In this article, we discuss how a mobile app can amplify the potential of your WordPress website. Powerful DIY app makers like AppMySite have paved the way for WordPress site owners to create a mobile app effortlessly.
