How do I get started with a mobile offering and what to consider when setting it up?
Unless you already have a specific idea for your mobile app, you can generally follow our clear checklist, which has proven successful in practice:
From design to launch in less than an hour!
The checklist consists of just a few items that you can easily work through, starting from the top. Depending on your skill level, even those with little experience can complete the four steps in a few minutes to an hour after getting started.
If you’re short on time, we’d be happy to handle this for you separately. Just contact us via our live chat in the bottom right corner to get more information.
2. 🎨 Design—Upload your logo, icon, color scheme, etc.
To ensure the app is associated with your business or personal project, it needs a visual identity. Given the wide variety of possible solutions, we’ve made this process simple for you and kept the required information to a reasonable minimum.
You can quickly enter the relevant visual details in the “Design” tab.
3. 🍱 Presentation – “What We Do,” Hours of Operation, etc.
Before your app gains important added value, you should enter the basic information. Use pre-built modules such as “What We Do,” “Hours of Operation,” “Contacts,” etc. These should be filled with information about your business or project. In the process, you’ll quickly and intuitively learn how to manage the app and work with individual modules.
Don’t worry—the information you enter doesn’t have to be complete. You can add, change, or remove additional information and building blocks at any time. All changes are immediately pushed to all of your users’ devices—even if they’re using your app at that very moment.
4. 📣 Communication—News, Store, Coupons, Chat, etc.
To ensure your users continue using your app for as long as possible, you’ll need a few modules that help achieve this, depending on your specific goals. This depends on whether you’re running a business, an organization, or a private project for a group. First and foremost, news always plays a role. You can use the “News” module and populate it with the latest updates.
As a business, for example, tools for selling—such as a mobile store—as well as loyalty cards or coupons for customer retention are very important. To stay in constant contact with customers and, if necessary, receive important feedback, you can also easily set up a chat feature.
Tip: The form module is great for digitally capturing processes—such as reservations or project inquiries—that were previously handled by phone or manually, directly and without interruption. This saves you valuable time and allows your customers to contact your business even at unusual times of the day.
Tip II: In general, relevant information in your field is always worth its weight in gold. After you publish it, Google will visit your site more frequently and ensure that users from afar can also find you by searching for your topics.
Clubs or private projects can use the modules in a similar way but with a different focus. Here, for example, providing more information—perhaps even organized using submenus—offers greater value.
Thanks to the integrated social network, users can comment on and like or dislike much of the information in the app. This fosters communication on all sides.
5. 🏆 Announcement—Share with Your First Fans & Customers
As soon as your initial offering is ready, you should involve your first users early on. Good candidates include loyal customers, team members, or simply people who can provide you with initial feedback.
You can find out how easy this is in the “Publish” tab at the top. Below that, you’ll learn about the app address and how your app ends up on your users’ smartphones, tablets, PCs, or Macs.
Leave the automatically enabled comment feature turned on so that feedback can be provided directly within the app.
You don’t need to officially publish the app just yet to distribute it, but you should already come up with a concise, short name to serve as the app address. You can set this in the “Settings” tab.
During the testing phase, it’s important that you also use the News feature and publish test articles so that push notifications reach users. At the same time, you can check the “Live Report” tab in the upper right corner at any time to see how often the app is downloaded or restarted.
6. ❤️ Feedback—Gather Positive Feedback and Have Fun
While you’re gathering feedback—which you can take your time with, even a week or two—you can simultaneously implement the insights directly through the app’s admin panel. When it comes to content-related issues or simple feedback about missing features, you can easily integrate them live in no time.
Whenever you make a major change, it’s a good idea to publish a new news article. This can briefly and concisely outline the changes.
If you and your test group encounter bugs or have additional requests, it helps us if you let us know directly via the live chat in the bottom right corner. Often, our customer support team may already have an idea on how to implement it or will forward it directly to our product development team.
And what’s next...
By reaching this step, you’ve already accomplished a great deal. You’ve created a mobile offering, filled it with content relevant to you and your users, familiarized yourself with the admin interface, and gained your first loyal users.
Now it’s time to launch the app on a large scale and promote it on Google, Facebook, and via email. You can find out how to do this in the “Publish” tab or directly in the admin dashboard.
Good luck, and keep us posted. ✌️
From our Digital Academy:
What added value and features are important? How should content generally be structured? What design considerations should you keep in mind? And much more.