Having your app listed in Google Play or iOS is a big advantage. For many business owners, the presence in the app stores is a matter of life and death. Many business owners can even live without a good website, but they could not live without an app in Google Play, iOS and Amazon store. But here is the thing. If your website was 10 000 eur, your app will be about the same price. Sounds pricey? Indeed it is, but there is a solution. There are 2 types of an app you can have and while the first one costs thousands, the other one goes for less than a hundred. Gone are the days when the price of an app was equal to the price of your page. This statement is not fully true, so let us investigate here.

Native App

Native apps are the expensive ones. The code has to be written from scratch and the development costs are many times higher than the prices for a website. You can indeed have a limited functionality (compared to your website), but do you really want it? Besides that, there is another thing. Different app stores require slightly different codes. Now I speak about iOS. Those guys made a big effort to give the business owners hard times and extra costs.

Having a native app makes sense if you are an established brand quoted on the stock exchange or a million here or there does not really matter. In that case you have to go with option A.

WebView app

Then there is a cheap version of an app - if you can call it really an app. Have you noticed that many times the app looks like a copy of a website? This might be because you are actually looking at the website. Do you know what an iframe is? If not, let me give you a real  quick explanation. Iframe is basically like a window or a tv that allows you to look at whatever is to be looked at. In the case of a WebView app, you are looking at the website.

What are the WebView apps? What do we need to invest the money into? WebView apps are basically the windows that let you see the website and that means you only have to make the code for the “window”, while the functionality of the website is not to be bothered with. It is much cheaper to build a window than the outside world that the window is supposed to look at. Do you want an example? Here is a 40 dollars app, and tell me if you can tell the difference from a native app.

But what if you are active in a niche that is not accepted in the stores

What are the options of those who will not get approved in Google Play, iOS or Amazon?

Can you still benefit from the apps? Hell yeah. You know there are some dirty businesses like gambling and a few more. No matter how many millions you made last year, you will still be considered as a dodgy business and none of the stores will normally allow you to have your app in their store. Not even if you are promoting any services like sports, but running gambling ads.

As a gambling operator, you would have to push your app through your page but to be able to do that, the customer first has to visit your web. But how do the customers find you? Mostly Google search indeed, but there is a trap.

Being successful on Google in a highly competitive environment is extremely expensive. The industries I am talking about are finance, investment, insurance and dozens more. The biggest part of the business (meaning more than 90%) is being taken by the top 3 positions in Google search results, and the remaining ones only get peanuts to share. However, to get to being within the top 3, you have to spend tens (even hundreds) of thousands for advertisement, content and believe or not - link building. The link building market is already becoming a multi million industry and there is no escape to it. For small business owners there is a big question to be answered.

Who is really going to link to your page?

The cruel answer is “not many” or in most of the cases “nobody”. Why should any media with domain authority close to a 100 give a flying f*** about your e-commerce or your gambling website? The chance of being linked to from pages like bbc is as low as hitting a jackpot in lotto (if not lower). There are some crooks on the market, but that is also not an option. E.g. in forbes with domain authority close to 90 you can buy a link for 3 000 - 7 000 (depending on your location). They call it “success stories section” but this is basically an expensive PR promo thing you have to pay for. Why am I talking about this?

Here is the promised hidden benefit of app stores

Now comes the funny part. There are cheap ways to have a few links with a high domain authority for around a hundred each. This webmaster created a simple game app for 300 and shared it to different stores gaining great links and boosting his website. Just look at the links in the app stores. Being in the “bad niche”, this gave him a skyrocketing advantage.

Let’s have a look at the quality of the link you get from different app stores. Below you see the list of top 4 app stores together with a domain authority you can expect.

1. Google Play Console - domain authority 95+
2. Apple for developers - domain authority 95+
3. Amazon for developers - domain authority 95+
4. Catappult store - distributed to app stores (e.g. aptoide) with domain authority 75+
5. Microsoft Partner program - domain authority 95+

Can you imagine a better link profile? Of course you can, but in most cases it is impossible to achieve.