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How to Easily Add Smart App Banners in WordPress

Do you want to add smart app banners in WordPress?

Smart banners are an easy way to promote your mobile app and get visitors to download it. If an iOS user already has your app, then the banner will encourage them to open the app for a better user experience.

In this article, we will show you how to add smart app banners to WordPress.

How to add smart app banners in WordPress (easy)

Why Add Smart App Banners in WordPress?

Many website owners create a companion mobile app where visitors can browse their content in a way that’s optimized for mobile.

Since these apps are designed for mobile devices, they often provide a better user experience. You can also show reminders, personalized content, offers, updates, and more using mobile push notifications. All of this means more engagement, conversions, and sales.

If you don’t already have a mobile app, then you can see our complete guide on how to convert a WordPress website into a mobile app.

You can encourage iPhone and iPad users to download your mobile app using a smart app banner. This is a banner that appears at the top of the screen when an iOS user visits your site using the Safari browser.

An example of a smart app banner on a WordPress website

Visitors can click the banner to download your app from the App Store. If the visitor already has your app, then the banner will ask them to open the app instead. In this way, you can get more downloads and engagement.

If the visitor is using a non-Apple device or a different web browser, then WordPress will hide the banner from them automatically.

For example, the following image shows the same website in the Chrome mobile browser.

A hidden smart app banner.

With that being said, let’s see how you can add smart app banners in WordPress. Simply use the quick links below to jump straight to the method you want to use:

Method 1: Using WPCode (Show a Smart App Banner Across WordPress)

The easiest way to add smart app banners to your WordPress website is by using WPCode. This free plugin allows you to show the same banner on every page and post using one line of code.

With that in mind, WPCode is the perfect choice if you want to promote a single iOS application. However, if you want to show different banners on different pages, then we recommend using method 2 instead.

When adding custom code to WordPress, some guides will ask you to edit your site’s functions.php file. We don’t recommend this, as even a small typo or mistake could cause common WordPress errors or even make your site inaccessible.

By using WPCode, you can add custom code to WordPress without any risks. You can also enable and disable code snippets with the click of a button.

First, you need to install and activate the free WPCode plugin. For more instructions, please see our beginners’ guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, head over to Code Snippets » Add Snippet. Next, click the ‘Use Snippet’ button under the ‘Add Your Custom Code (New Snippet)’ option.

Adding an iOS smart app banner to WordPress

This will take you to the ‘Create Custom Snippet’ page, where you can type in a name for the code snippet. This is just for your reference, so you can use anything you want.

After that, open the ‘Code Type’ dropdown and choose ‘HTML Snippet’.

Creating an Apple app banner using WPCode

For the next step, you will need to know your application’s ID.

To get this information, open a new browser tab and head to the Apple Services Marketing Tools page. Here, type in the name of the application you want to promote and click on the ‘Search’ icon.

The App Marketing Tools website

To see all the iOS apps that match your search term, simply scroll to the ‘Apps’ section.

Here, find the app you want to promote and give it a click.

Getting the app ID for an iPhone or iPad iOS app

At the bottom of the screen, you will see a ‘Content Link’.

The app ID is the value between id and ?. You will need this information in the next step, so either leave this tab open or make a note of the app ID.

An Apple App ID

Now you have the app ID, switch back to the WordPress dashboard. You can now add the following snippet into the code editor, replacing the app ID with the information you got in the previous step:

<meta name="apple-itunes-app" content="app-id=12345678">
Hosted with ❤️ by WPCode
1-click Use in WordPress

With that done, you must scroll to the ‘Insertion’ box. If it isn’t already selected, click on ‘Auto Insert’ and then select ‘Site Wide Header’ from the dropdown menu.

Adding custom code to the WordPress theme header

When you are ready, scroll to the top of the page and toggle the ‘Inactive’ switch to ‘Active’.

Finally, just click the ‘Save Snippet’ button to store your changes.

Publishing a smart app banner to WordPress

Now, the smart app banner will appear on your WordPress website.

How to Test the Smart App Banner Code in WordPress

The best way to test the smart app banner is by visiting your website on an iOS device using the Safari mobile app. In fact, the smart app banner won’t even appear if you try to view the mobile version of your WordPress site from desktop.

If you need to quickly check whether the code snippet is working, then one workaround is to use your browser’s Inspect tool. It allows you to see whether the <meta name> code has been inserted into your site’s <head>section, which suggests it’s working as expected.

To do this, go to any page or post on your WordPress blog. Then, right-click anywhere on the page and select ‘Inspect’.

The Google Chrome Inspect tool

A new panel will open, showing all the site’s code.

Simply find the <head> section and click on its arrow to expand.

Apple app code in the WordPress header

Now, look for the <meta name="apple-itunes-app"> code you added in the previous step.

If you see this code, then the smart app banner should be appearing on iOS devices.

Testing the Apple smart app banner code

Method 2: Using Smart App Banner (Add Banners to Specific Pages and Posts)

Sometimes, you may want to only promote apps on specific pages and posts. For example, you typically won’t show a smart app banner on sales pages and landing pages as the banner might distract from the main call to action.

You may even want to show different banners on different parts of your website. For instance, if you are an affiliate marketer, then you might have a list of apps you want to promote.

In this case, we recommend using the Smart App Banner plugin. This plugin allows you to show different banners on different pages and include affiliate data in those banners. These features make it a great plugin for affiliate marketers.

First, you will need to install and activate the Smart App Banner plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you can add an app banner to specific pages or posts, the WordPress homepage, or across your entire website.

To start, let’s look at the app’s settings. Here, you can add a banner to every page and post or add a smart app banner to your homepage only.

To start, go to Settings » Smart App Banner and type the application’s value into the ‘App ID’ field.

Adding an app ID to a WordPress plugin

You can get this information by following the same process described in Method 1.

If you are using affiliate marketing to make money online blogging, then you can type your affiliate token into the ‘Affiliate data’ field. The information will vary, so you may need to log in to your affiliate portal or speak to your partners to get the right token.

After that, you can either check the ‘Show on all pages’ box or leave it unchecked. If you leave the box unchecked, then the app banner will only appear on your homepage.

Showing a smart app banner across your WordPress blog or website

When you are happy with how the banner is set up, simply click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to make it live.

Do you want to add a smart app banner to specific pages and posts instead? This allows you to control exactly where the banner appears on your website.

For example, if you are an affiliate marketer, then you might promote different apps on different pages and then use Google Analytics to see which banners get the most conversions.

To do this, simply open the page or post where you want to add the banner. Now, find the new ‘Smart App Banner’ section in the WordPress content editor.

Adding a smart app banner to a WordPress page or post

Here, just add the app ID and optional affiliate information by following the same process described above.

When you are happy with the information you have entered, just click on ‘Update’ or ‘Publish’ to make your changes live.

An example of a smart app banner on a WordPress blog or website

Then, you can simply repeat these steps to add a smart app banner to more WordPress posts and pages.

FAQs About Adding Smart App Banners in WordPress

In this guide, we showed you how to promote your mobile app on specific posts and pages or across your entire WordPress website.

If you still have questions, then here are our top FAQs about how to add smart banners to your WordPress website.

What is a smart app banner?

Smart app banners appear at the top of the Safari web browser and give users the option to open an app or download it from the Apple App Store.

Since they are created by Apple, smart app banners have a consistent design that many iOS users recognize. They only appear to people who are using iPhones and iPads running iOS 6 or higher.

Why can’t I see my smart app banner on desktop?

The smart app banner won’t appear on desktop computers, even if you view the mobile version of your site.

To see the banner in action, you will need to visit your site on an iPhone or iPad using the Safari mobile app.

Why can’t I see the smart app banner on my iPhone or iPad?

Smart app banners only appear on devices running iOS 6 or higher when you are using the Safari mobile app. If you don’t see the smart app banner, then you should start by checking you have the latest versions of both iOS and the Safari mobile app.

The smart app banner also detects whether the device can support the app and if the app is available in your location. If you don’t see the smart app banner, then it’s possible that your device has failed one of these checks.

Why has the smart app banner disappeared in Safari?

If you dismiss the banner by clicking the ‘x’ button, then it won’t appear again by default.

Depending on your mobile device, you may need to open a private browser tab, clear your cache or cookies, or perform some other action to reset your settings.

We hope that this article helped you learn how to add smart app banners in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to add web push notifications to your WordPress site or our expert picks for the best WordPress popup plugins.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Easily Add Smart App Banners in WordPress first appeared on WPBeginner.

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Building a Kotlin Mobile App with the Salesforce SDK, Part 3: Synchronizing Data

This is our final post in our three-part series demonstrating how to use the Salesforce Mobile SDK to build an Android app that works with the Salesforce platform. In our first post, we showed you how to connect to your org. Our second post showed you how to edit and add data to your org from your app. This post will show you how to synchronize data from your Salesforce org to your mobile device and handle scenarios such as network loss. Let’s get right into it!

Working With Mobile Sync

One of the hardest aspects of mobile development is dealing with data synchronization. How do you handle the situation when you need to add a new broker, but you’re offline? Or what if two agents are updating the same broker: how can you handle the merging of those two changes?

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6 iOS and Swift Projects to Learn iOS App Development

Hello folks, if you are learning iOS App development and looking for some project ideas to understand the concepts better and apply your existing knowledge, you have come to the right place. 

Earlier, I have shared the best iOS and Swift courses, and today, I will talk about five cool projects you can do to learn iOS app development and master several key concepts like UI, Core ML, Speech to text, and other APIs. 

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Building a Kotlin Mobile App With the Salesforce SDK: Editing and Creating Data

Here in Part Two of our three-part series, we continue to build on the fundamentals of Android development with the Salesforce Mobile SDK. In Part One, we covered project setup and creating a layout that fetches data from Salesforce, using Kotlin as our programming language of choice.

Before we continue towards developing a complete mobile synchronization strategy, we’ll first build out our mobile app to allow editing and creating data on our Salesforce org.

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Mobile software development; Native or Web?

When you're faced with two options, it's common to create a list of advantages and disadvantages between both of your options, for then to weigh these up against each other. When your choice is whether or not to go for native mobile or a responsive web app, your list might resemble the following - As in, these are the advantages you'll have when creating a web app.

  • You don't need to send Apple 25% of your earnings
  • You won't be thrown out of the AppStore because of competing with some Apple product
  • You don't have to create 3 versions of your app, in 3 different programming languages, being Swift, Java and PHP/Python/.Net/etc
  • You don't need 3x as many developers to maintain your app further down the line
  • You don't have to fight with neither Flutter nor Xamarin for "device x with resolution y" because of "missing feature z"
  • Etc, etc, etc ...

The above are some of the advantages you'll have if you create a responsive web app. We all know the arguments in favour of building native - However, the primary (only?) argument really seems to be some permutation of "you can't do that with the web". Well, we built a complete IDE, SQL Workbench, Cloud platform, etc, etc, etc, where the system produces according to neutral metrics between 50 and 80 percent of your backend code automatically for you, and to prove it, I just published a YouTube video where I in real time create 3,300 lines of backend code, from my iPhone, resulting in 100+ HTTP endpoints, securely wrapping my database. The video is 3 minutes and 53 seconds long.

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Building a Kotlin Mobile App with the Salesforce SDK

Nowadays, users expect mobile apps to act as counterparts to the websites and platforms they use on the web. Mobile applications give users the ability to carry their data with them, granting them the flexibility to interact with platforms wherever they go. This usability makes sense, and we are all familiar with it.

Developing a mobile experience that’s seamlessly integrated with the functionality of your website can be intimidating. For starters, how should you store and retrieve data if the mobile app loses connectivity? What happens when two mobile users try to update the same data at the same time? How can you just make sure your app’s data is in sync, given that it has limited storage space?

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Leveraging Gamification in your Mobile App for Superior User Experience: Top Tips

In general, video games are considered to be dopamine-releasing products. When you're happy or excited, the chemical is released into your system. To make a non-gaming app more enticing to users, you must provide them with a cause to return and compete with one another regularly. Therefore, it is safe to assume that incorporating this experience into any of your applications makes them more joyful for your customers to use.

Having to rewrite your website or app is the least appealing aspect of this solution. The addition of gamification to your program does nothing to improve its performance; rather, it just enriches the user experience by making it more entertaining and rewarding for the user. The inclusion of gamification elements directly influences the number of downloads of an app. 

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Build Live Video Mobile Apps With Flutter

Many cameras can stream video using Motion JPEG. This is a stream of JPEG images that can be displayed in sequence to form a video. Many IP cameras use a GET HTTP request to an IP address. The camera I am using in this example is a RICOH THETA 360° camera that requires a POST command. More information on how this particular camera handles MotionJPEG is available in the community. Regardless of whether you use an HTTP GET or a POST request to start the motionJPEG stream, the processing is the same.

Motion JPEG Resolution and Framerate

Motion JPEG sends a stream of JPEG images at a specified resolution and framerate. Changing the resolution and framerate affects both the data transmission requirements and the latency.

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How To Improve Mobile Application Performance Through Cloud Integration

Mobile application development has increased tenfold due to the high demand for such digital platforms among users worldwide. According to a report, there are more than 3 billion mobile application users, and this is where most businesses are looking to capitalize.

Mobile application software helps businesses engage users on mobile devices, making it an attractive investment. Mobile applications offer higher engagement value for organizations, but they also help organizations generate more leads. 

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Building Apps That Avoid In-App Taxes: There Are Several Workable Options

Freedom has always been the cornerstone of technology. And yet, there is no freedom without options. For example, users should have a choice in how they pay for digital goods offered in-app. Although the Supreme Court’s recent decision in the battle between Epic Games and Apple was mixed, the judges ruled Apple cannot stop developers from directing users to other methods of payment in their apps. That’s good news for app developers looking for alternatives.

There are many different options for hosting payments — in-app or on the web, developing an actual web app that would not require mandatory taxes, a hybrid of in-app and outside the app, and so on. The options are ever-changing, so it can be difficult to keep up. 

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5 Things to Consider Before You Build Your App

When mobile app development came on the market, it was a game-changer. It allowed for an unprecedented level of mobile optimization that has never been seen before. With mobile apps now being one of the most popular ways to not just run your business but also promote and advertise it, many people are considering getting into mobile app development themselves. However, there are several things to think about before developing an app to ensure that you want to pursue it in the long run.

When you're making mobile apps, you must have a clear idea about what mobile platform it will be on. Will it be a native app, a hybrid app, or even a progressive web app (PWA)? Then there's the dilemma of whether to use an existing mobile development provider or not. In this blog post, we'll cover these important factors that you should think about before commencing mobile development and building your app!

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11 Best No-Code/Low-Code Backends of 2021

No-code and low-code development platforms let people worldwide build their businesses and applications without writing code. According to Forrester, the no-code/low-code category will grow to $21.2 billion by 2021.

Before these platforms, building an application for a business would require hiring experienced software developers. But that’s not the case anymore. Today, many no-code/low-code platforms make it possible for independent creators, artists, and entrepreneurs alike to build applications on their own.

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Improving Mobile App Performance With a Powerful Database

You are probably aware that there are seemingly endless options to consider when it comes to selecting a database and other technologies for your mobile app. With so many choices, it can be difficult and confusing to determine what really matters when it comes to your tech stack. A little while back, I wrote an extensive article on the different database architectures and use cases available to provide guidance on picking the right technology for the right project. While that is still an accurate and solid resource, this article takes a deeper dive into considerations for improving the performance of, specifically, mobile apps.

Mobile vs. Web Apps

First and foremost, perhaps we should take a quick look at the difference between mobile and web apps. Mobile apps live and run on a mobile device itself, whereas web apps are accessed through a web browser and will adapt to whichever device you're viewing them on. Native mobile apps are built for a specific platform, such as iOS for Apple or Android for, well, pretty much everything else. They are downloaded and installed through an app store and have access to system resources, such as GPS and the camera function. Web apps, however, are not native to a particular system and do not need to be downloaded or installed. Due to their responsive nature, they may look and function a lot like mobile apps, which is where some confusion arises.

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Mobile Apps Dataset

Introduction

My main job is related to mobile advertising, and from time to time, I have to work with mobile application datasets.

I decided to make some of the data publicly available for those who want to practice building models or get an idea of some of the data that can be collected from open sources. I believe that open-source datasets are always useful as they allow you to learn and grow. Collecting data is often a difficult and dreary job, and not everyone has the ability to do it.

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Mobile App Architecture Design and Development

You might have contemplated the ramifications of mobility around us. From an airplane ticket booking to shopping from the solace of your lounge chair, you can use mobile apps. Ordering your favorite food or learning desired courses online, mobile apps are used. With mobile applications, you can pay your bills in a few snaps of your finger. So, every part of your life is moved by the abilities of phone apps.

Many organizations today have enhanced their business effectiveness with mobile architecture design. There are so many mobile architecture applications in the market today. So, there is pressure on companies that work on mobile app development. They are under pressure to create applications that stick out. It prompts furious rivalry between them. Mobile architecture is one of the essentials of application design.

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A Quick Guide To Mobile Application Testing

Smartphones are advancing at a rapid pace, and so are mobile applications. That’s why there has been a significant increase in the demand for mobile app developers. The market is indeed brimming with mobile applications of all kinds. Today, you can find an application for almost anything — whether you need to shop for clothes or find a doctor.

In this cut-throat and competitive market, every company is aiming to provide the best-in-class applications to their customers. Applications need to be innovative and interesting, and in order to make an application effective and free from any glitches, mobile app testing is a crucial step in the process.

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Instant API Backends

Is backend creation blocking your Mobile App Dev? Or strategic B2B/internal integration?

 Imagine that you could...
Create a database API, instantly?
And declare logic, with spreadsheet-like rules?
Plus an instant Web App, to engage Business Users?

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A Comprehensible Guide to Real-Time Features in Mobile App Development

The rapid development of computer technology has led to the fact that the developed devices have become more complex and include a large number of functions. It became possible to develop devices that meet modern requirements thanks to progress in the field of design technologies and a significant reduction in the cost of the elemental base.

Introduction to Real-Time Systems 

Real-time features are nowadays necessary for a successful mobile app. There are a large number of real-time operating modules, and they all perform one task - managing a system. Below, we listed some of the most important features of the real-time operating app nowadays.