There are lots of tools for WordPress . PressPad News focus on content and our new tools for content producers help them achieve their business goals.

The ongoing development and improvement process of Mobile publishing accompany us from the beginning. New features in the mobile applications platform we do create for WordPress publishers enable opportunities to monetize on mobile, improve communication with readers and improve quality of the Internet traffic to the content.

Mobile Publishing more effective

New solutions and improvements we were working for the past months on the Presspad News make mobile publishing even more effective. Can you afford not getting your own News app?

Read more to form your own judgement.

The day we launched PressPad News it was not quite obvious for us whether this WordPress to app services becomes popular. Will publishers perceive it as an increase the value of their content? And finally, if our business assumptions are even close to the product market fit?

We were (and still are) building PressPad News in the lean startup manner, where the minimum viable product comes first and it’s followed by many iterations based on the market feedback.

We were wondering if that feedback will ever come?

That is the always to be uncertainty the one has to challenge if you do something quite new and innovative.

Suddenly it started to happen.

People started asking questions and we noticed the nice flow of very positive reviews, our News apps have been receiving.

I must say that it motivates us a lot because we are in the crossfire from our customers — who usually are the news publishers in rather vertical topics like local news, sports team news, technology news etc. — and their readers.

PressPad News is not another app builder

Content publishers really like simplicity and content orientation of PressPad News. And to be honest the less techy it feels the better for the publishers who are mainly the content producers and not technical developers.

With our system, they can simply connect their WordPress to the PressPad News dashboard and we do the rest.

We hear your voice.

Yeah, obviously that’s a cliche… but it’s true.

Thanks to the feedback we are getting from our publishers we can develop PressPad News the way it helps achieve real goals of our news publishers and content creators. That’s how the latest features have come to life including monetization, analytics, and communication goals.

There are new features and tools for WordPress publishers

Let’s sum up recent updates to PressPad News.

Our news apps were designed to help creators’ and publishers’ achieve their business goals – promoting their brand among mobile users more efficiently, and opening native mobile monetization channel for their content.

Rich Push Notifications

Rich push notification is a part of the auto-push mechanism that is notifying about the new content via the branded mobile app. But the concept of rich push notifications based on including photos making the notification more eye-attractive and catchy.

After all the main role of push notifications is to catch the attention and trigger the action on it. So displaying the fullscreen to zoom article cover in the notification works just well in the fight for grabbing users’ attention.

— How does Rich Push Notifications work?

When you publish a new article, the app sends rich push notifications with article cover’s thumbnail to your readers automatically. It grabs people’s attention much better and you can engage readers whenever you need to. It increases retention to the content. You can also send push notifications manually as a part of the other mobile marketing campaign.

Hint: You can change push notifications settings using the web-based dashboard to better adjust the application to your users.

WordPress Categories Support

WordPress Categories group articles into sections for a specified type of content. For example, a lifestyle magazine website can have categories such as Home, Fashion, Health&Beauty, you name it. It makes using a news app more convenient and simple. Readers can easily find suitable content and read exactly what they’re interested in.

Categories allow visitors to head to the content of their interest. Thanks to WordPress Categories support we can cover two types of usability schemes or use cases.

First. When the user is scrolling through the available content. It’s like hunting the content down, on the list of eye-catching graphics and titles.

Second. When the user is interested in the particular category and wants to explore it without any interruption.

Categories are the convenient way to explore content, and the readers don’t waste time searching for the right content for themselves if they are in rush. The same goes for the news app. With WordPress Categories support, the mobile app users are able to easily navigate towards requested articles within a blink of an eye or two.

The design is user-friendly and involves intuitive drop-down menu containing all different sections. It’s possible to choose one special topic to read or select “all” to get the articles in the a-chronological order — from the newest article on the top.

Google Adsense and AdMob

The native In-article ad is a new ad format that helps you put native ads between the paragraphs of your article, which is visible in your mobile app. Google Adsense provides a better user experience and helps publishers boost content revenue.

Google Ads just help you grow your business and increase the overall ad revenue. Ads are perfectly matched to the look of your content, what makes the great user experience for your readers.

This solution is based on full-width ads that are ideal for monetizing the smaller screen spaces available on mobile devices. Responsive ads adapt to screen size and look good also on smartphones without disturbing layout.

Hint: In this Google Support article you can check how in-article ads differ from the standard ads.

Last but not least. Your News apps can also support with GPT – Google Publisher Tag – which means creating flexible ads that adapt to the user’s browser. The results of using GPT are just great. These ads will look perfect on a smartphone.

However, some publishers choose AdMob over the rest of advertising platforms. For those of you who belong to this group, we have prepared a seamless integration with our News apps.

AdMob

AdMob is focused on matching ads to your app based on criteria you set. Consequently, users get accurate, attractive and the highest performing ads which are perfectly matched to them.

You can also use house ads to cross-promote your own apps, and run direct deals as well as customize the look of ads to match your content and your app.

Hint: If you are not familiar with AdMob you will find all about it on their website.

So, if you want to use some of the above-mentioned ads platforms in your News app you should contact us or left the comment to this article. We’ll happily address your requests.

Disqus and Facebook Comments mobile Integration

Allowing people to discuss the articles and blog posts is one of the greatest tactics to engage readers with your content (actually with other people sharing their thoughts and insights).

According to the research by Viafoura enabling comments increase time on content by the factor of 364% on site per week.

Disqus helps you increase engagement. It enables building loyal audiences and keep them coming back with reliable sign-in options. So does Facebook Comments. This is a combination of social media and comment engagement in one place and the easiest way to comment posts for over a billion people on the Planet.

So the question is not if you want to enable discussions in your news app but what kind of commenting platform do you use.

Using Disqus or Facebook comments on your WordPress website? You can have it enabled also on your news app.

Readers love it!

Google Analytics for your mobile app

Tracking app performance is important.

What’s even more important is tracking how your content performs among mobile users. You can track all these metrics from your PressPad News dashboard.

• The number of installs
• The number of articles views
• The most popular articles
• The most saved articles
• The number of active users

You can also have these KPIs allocated on the timeline so you are able to say what works when. For example, if you invested in the paid advertisement you can clearly figure out if there are any peaks visible on the chart.

Of course, as I stated above, you can track this data via the analytics section in your PressPad News Dashboard. It’s easy to use and a very convenient way for a quick look at your app performances. But let’s face the truth, Google Analytics reports will be much more credible for your advertisers. Point.

Google Analytics is the powerful marketing analytics solution that gives you necessary knowledge about your content popularity among mobile users.

PressPad News analytics vs Google Analytics

So, despite using our own built-in analytics I highly motivate you to connect your mobile app with Google Analytics via our in-app integration.

What is sweet about it, it’s a hidden reward out there. Thanks to this integration your mobile application visits will be count as a content visits on your website, by the mobile user. That affects your Internet traffic counter pushing it the north direction!

How to track your mobile app performance via Google Analytics?

We assign an event to your app that identifies visits from your News app:

• Event Category: News app
• Event Label: PressPadNews (the optional label used to describe triggered event)
• Event Action: News app post visit (The actions that were assigned to triggered events)

You can use this behavioral report: BEHAVIOR > Events > Overview from Google Analytics left side menu to track your content usage.

BEHAVIOR > Events > Top Events (Optionally expand the report with a secondary dimension: Behavior > Landing Page)

When you add the secondary dimension to the above report you will receive a detailed list split by landing pages.

Also it is possible to track the usage of your content consumption via the mobile app in the real time. To do this go to your Google Analytics and chose from the left side menu REAL-TIME > Overview | REAL-TIME > Events

What else

The development of PressPad together with the introduction of the new tools for WordPress wouldn’t have been possible without feedback from you. Thank you for every comment you do, and valuable remarks which help us improve digital publishing — we’re looking forward to hearing from you.

If you have any questions or just want to share your insights, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Even small publishing houses without a technical background love PressPad mobile publishing solutions because of the ease of use of our tools. We’ll gladly jump into the phone conversation to answer your mobile publishing-related questions.

With PressPad you don’t have to program to cooperate with us. Let us be your mobile technology backbone — this approach allows you to focus on publishing, while we’ll take care of the rest.

Everything we’ve done so far, affect the quality mobile publishing process. And it’s not the end of our ideas. We are still working on our applications’ updates and new solutions to make digital publishing great experience for both publishers and their readers.

The post New Tools for WordPress Help Content Producers Achieve Business Goals appeared first on Digital Publishing Blog by PressPad.