I’m managing a community for a professional body. We’re contemplating launching an app, not just for the community, but also to include our podcasts, videos, and other content.
My question is, have any of you noticed increased community engagement by launching a mobile app, or has it had little impact?
Haven’t done it personally, but I do believe it will help. Users won’t have to go to their browser, open up the website, and go to the forum/watch the podcasts.
If it (the app) were on their homepage, it would attract them there since the forum is a click away, and if they are bored, they can check out the podcasts and videos, increasing community engagement.
our engagement more than doubled since launching our app. go for it if you can afford it. we just put discourse as a webview inside the rest of the app. our other parts of the app is totally native. it was approved by both google and apple.