Over the weekend I built an app for the community and I was a little stunned that in 48 hours it hasn’t been downloaded a single time. Now I’m not one to give out grandiose numbers regarding the amount of people that come to this website,  each day I get between 800-1000 visitors,  that’s it. Out of those visitors 20% come to the site via a mobile device,  though the number is actually much higher as Google Analytics doesn’t track Android users separately. So on any given day around 200 people visit my site on a mobile device, so I figured that an app would be an awesome tool for people to use. This isn’t something that I am giving up on though,  I intend to follow through and work even harder on this app. At least until someone wants to play a game of one-upmanship. 🙂

The prototype is already built and you can view it below. In fact if anyone would like to download it you will achieve two things. Firstly you would make me very happy,  and secondly it is always nice to get some type of feedback. Anyone can click the HTML5 box to view what the app looks like!! If it is downloaded,  the icon that appears on your phone is the head shot that you see of me,  though I am probably going to change that to an icon.

RICHARD WINDSOR’S PHONE APP

Here is what I have added since I started,  and what I think is going to be the key for success. If you have checked the link you will see that I added a links section,  and that I think is the most important piece. The app isn’t just about my blogs and my social network,  it is also a hub where you can get easy access to any spanking blog that you want to visit from your phone. The links listed were copied from my site so they go directly to the blog in question. Keep in mind that the product isn’t completely finished

The other piece that I have added and what I also think will help to make the app a big success is a folder called stories. Now this piece I think that I am going to expand a lot,  especially being that I don’t need the live chat so I can remove that and replace it with a folder for the stories of various authors. Right now I only have my own stories in the folder,  and knowing from my own stats,  people tend to flock to my site a lot to read stories.

I don’t want anyone to think that I am snaffling their work to make my own site more popular though. There was one time when a website asked for all of my stories to add to their site,  and while it made me feel a little uncomfortable to say it,  my response was pretty simple,  I wasn’t okay with it because I wanted people to come to my site to read my work,  not go to another website to see my work. So what I have prepared is a readymade HTML code to add the stories from people’s sites. So anyone who wants a story added will only be supplying a link to their own site.

As an example,  if you check the stories folder on my app and click on any one of them,  the link takes you directly to that story on my website,  not on the app. So with the various authors folder,  all it is going to contain is a link to your website and specifically the page where the story is. So far from taking traffic away from someone’s website,  it will actually be increasing traffic to their website.

So can anyone using a mobile phone go ahead and either click on the Native Android box or the HTML5 box and let me know your thoughts? Like I mentioned,  it isn’t anywhere close to being finished,  but it is live and it is working and ready to accept visitors.