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Some people come to my website with their phones or tablets. I would like to convert these web users to use my app instead. What would be the best practice to advertise the app?

  • A modal popup.
  • A notification bar at the top of the page like StackExchange's notifications.
  • An interstitial page with two buttons: one to the app store, the other to the web version.
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  • How can the website know if the app is already installed?
    – user371
    Commented Jul 30, 2011 at 9:29
  • The website will not be able to know. But supposedly, the majority of the web users don't have the app. If they had the app, they wouldn't go to the web version. This is my assumption.
    – JoJo
    Commented Jul 30, 2011 at 16:57
  • Though it would be annoying to users who don't want to install the app, but they will be confronted with the dialog every time they use your web app.
    – user371
    Commented Jul 30, 2011 at 17:04
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    This is a business requirement. Designers are being told by upper management to do annoying things all the time. But at least I can make this annoying thing less annoying by designing it properly.
    – JoJo
    Commented Jul 30, 2011 at 22:24

2 Answers 2

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The notification bar seems a good idea to announce there is a mobile app.

The specific page is a good idea to inform the user about the value of the mobile app (specific functionality available only with the mobile app: upload your pictures from your camera..). This has the disadvantage that can be annoying if you are asked each time so maybe its a good idea to only show it the first time and use the notification bar approach next time.

An alternative is to provide the option at the bottom of the page where options to access different content versions are provided (regular version, mobile version, mobile app)

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    I like the idea of putting the link at the footer. But I think it should be used in conjunction with another advertisement technique because not all users will scroll all the way down to the footer. I see most mobile sites already have a selector in the footer: mobile | classic. We could extend this to have a link to the app: app | mobile | classic.
    – JoJo
    Commented Jul 31, 2011 at 22:42
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Agree with the use of a notification bar but tapping on it would trigger an overlay (no page change, easy to dismiss) with very succinct information about the app and a button to the app store/android market.

This way the user would get a passive notification, would be able to quickly access more info about the app or install it and it'd be easy to dismiss either by scrolling or tapping a big dismiss button.

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  • Could I just have the notification bar lead directly to the Market / App Store instead of popping up an overlay? The store page has useful screenshots and user reviews.
    – JoJo
    Commented Jul 31, 2011 at 22:39
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    As long as it is clear he'll leave the page/browser, I think so. But you won't have the chance to tell the user anything else about the app without him having to load the App Store/Android Market and waiting for the app info to load.
    – lmjabreu
    Commented Aug 6, 2011 at 14:35

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