How To Turn Your WordPress Site Into an iPhone App

How To Turn Your WordPress Site Into an iPhone App

WiziApp offers a simple and non-technical solution for turning your WordPress site into an iPhone app. By creating a native app, your site can be searched and downloaded directly through the iPhone App Store, opening up a vast new audience for your content.

Turn your WordPress site into an iPhone App
WiziApp allows iPhone users to access your WordPress site more conveniently

WiziApp works in perfect harmony with WordPress, so the entire content of your site will be delivered seamlessly to your iPhone app. Posts, pages, comments, links, videos and everything else from your site are updated to the app in real time, giving users the full experience of your site in a format that’s optimized for the iPhone.

You can also take advantage of WiziApp’s ‘Push Notification Service’, which alerts your iPhone app audience whenever your site content is updated. Wiziapp features a handful of customization options that allow you to modify the appearance of your app, but no developer skills are required and the whole thing is essentially an automated process. Check out this brief promotional video from the makers of WiziApp for more info . . .

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So why turn your WordPress site into an iPhone app?

The App Store for iOS is the largest app marketplace in the world – by a very long measure, in fact. These statistics give you an idea of how enormous the iOS market really is:

  • There are roughly two hundred million iOS users worldwide (that’s 200,000,000).
  • Some fifteen billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store since it was founded (that’s 15,000,000,000).
  • The average iOS user spends 86% more time using native apps than they do browsing the web on their mobile device (in other words, your WordPress site is much more likely get read by iPhone junkies if it’s available as a native app).

All told, there’s a pretty compelling argument for pitching your WordPress site to the iOS crowd. If your blog already has a strong following, you can entrench that reader loyalty even further by making your content more accessible and convenient.

And if you’re still in the early stages of your blogging career, getting you WordPress site seen in the App Store is a big credibility booster and a great way to promote your work.

How the WordPress to App conversion works

First of all, you need to download and install the WiziApp plugin. You’ll now find the WiziApp menu in your WordPress dashboard – clicking on ‘create my app’ will open up the wizard, which guides you through the setup process.

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WiziApp plugin for WordPress
The setup wizard guides you through the configuration of your app - very simple stuff

There’s not a huge amount that you can do here in terms of personalizing the layout and appearance, but for such a simple and effortless way to create a native iPhone app, we can’t really complain.

Customizing your app in the setup wizard

  1. Choose a name for your app.
  2. Design your splash screen, which is the initial page that users see while the app is loading.
  3. Customize your theme and tab bar menu – the options are fairly limited here, but they do give you an extra degree of control over the finished product.
  4. Enable the push notification service if you wish, and choose your preferred alert settings.
  5. Configure your sharing settings, allowing users of the app to share via email, Facebook, Twitter and SMS.
  6. Finally, you have the option to integrate your AdMobs account, if you want to monetize your app.
  7. Preview your live app with the iPhone simulator. Once you’re happy with the settings, click ‘save and continue’.

NOTE: Up to this point in the process, everything is free. You only have to pay for WiziApp once you are happy with your iPhone app preview and ready to release it to iOS users.

What it costs to create your WordPress site app

Now for the bad news: WiziApp isn’t exactly cheap. There are three subscription plans available at the following prices:

Personal Blog: $199 setup fee + $19.90/month

Pro Blogger: $299 setup + $29.90/month

Enterprise: $499 setup + $49.90/month

The WiziApp pricing page details exactly what you get for your money. You’ll have to make an honest assessment of your WordPress site’s potential, and what sort of ROI you’ll get from using WiziApp.

Learn more about WordPress/iPhone integration

Want to know more about using WordPress and the iPhone together? These are a few articles that we’ve written about WordPress/iOS-related stuff in the last several months:

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