Building a Mobile App for your Blog
This evening we learned all about how and why to build a mobile app for a blog.
Tonight’s presentation was perhaps the most detailed and factual presentation we’ve had in the six or so years I’ve been running the London Bloggers Meetup. It’s also the first slide based presentation we’ve had for a long time too and it made a welcome change.
Our guest speakers were Pietro Saccomani and Alvise Susmel from mobiloud and Andrea Ottolina from Pixelinlove and Flubber Media. They started off by talking us through why we should consider building a mobile app for our blogs, what the advantages and disadvantages of the various approaches are, how to launch an app and then your options for making money with a mobile app.
I’ll post up a copy of the slides when I get them, but some of the key points I noted are:
> you should only build an app if your target audience is going to use it two or three times per week, otherwise it is unlikely to be used much and will in all likelihood be deleted fairly quickly.
> Most bloggers engage with their audience on the blog and then via email marketing, but recent research from email platform Mailchimp shows an average decrease in email open rates of 20%. Ouch.
> on average 60% of app users allow push notifications from apps.
> 30% – 60% of push notifications are opened.
> free apps are becoming more popular than paid for apps and developers are changing their business models to generate more revenues through advertising
> banner ads on mobile apps can achieve unto 2% click rates, in contract to web banners which are often around 0.1%
> interstitial ads are an effective form of advertising for click throughs
> there are various ad networks for mobile adds, but perhaps the four most significant apps for UK bloggers are iAd (from Apple), admob (from Google), Millenial Media and inmobi
> for SEO support and competitive intelligence when publishing mobile apps to the app stores, check out appcodes.com
There was so much more covered and the demo of mobiloud was useful too. What a simple and elegant solution they have developed. Look out for an LBM Audible podcast episode with the mobiloud crew coming to a speaker near you soon.
3/12/13 UPDATE
And here are the slides:
Thanks Andy for the post, it was a pleasure to meet you all. I’ve posted the slides on slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/pietrosaccomani/mobile-appsevent-november272013
Thanks Pietro, I have embedded the slides in the post now too.
Let’s get a date in the diary for the podcast interview. I know our listeners will get tremendous value from hearing your story on mobile apps and what you are doing at mobiloud.
Interesting slide show. I agree with slide 15 about RSS . Far too much junk in so many feeds. Apps are the way forward. Well worth the time and money