Things You Should Know Concerning How to Convert Website to iPhone App

Your business needs to follow the latest changes and trends to stay competitive and profitable. Since there are thousands of mobile devices, applications can engage a lot of users.

However, it’s better to carefully analyze the market before turning a website into an app for the iPhone. For instance, reading long posts or looking at the small details are much more convenient at the desktop. Keep in mind that companies such as Amazon or Airbnb started with a website and only after getting revenue they moved on with creating a mobile application.

There are several reasons to convert your website to an iPhone app:

1. The average American spends more than 2 hours on their mobile devices every day. Mobile applications are more comfortable to use on the go due to convenient UI/UX design.
2. The ability to send push notifications gives opportunities to always keep customers informed and engaged. With website, the most common way to reach users is an email. But modern consumers receive such a great amount of emails that they rarely read all of them.
3. The use of native features like GPS and camera.
4. The mobile applications can work in an offline mode. Of course, some functions will be limited, but it’s completely impossible to use a website without the Internet connection.
5. Mobile apps usually offer better personalization.

The market coverage of the world-famous giants- Apple and Google surmounts 95% of the total global app store market share within iOS and Android, accordingly. Apple is one of the most impacting and popular brands in the world, the size of which was more than $2 trillion in 2021.

The company is also the most significant technology market player on the planet. iOS-based devices initially comprise basic pre-downloaded applications and solutions. However, when opening Apple Store, users are able to expand their opportunities with a wide range of categorized products. Since the significant amount of traffic comes from mobile devices, every website should adopt responsive web design. It means that the website is optimized for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets with different screen resolutions. There is a huge difference in the experience users get from responsive websites and native iOS applications.

The application market for iOS is nowadays considered to be one of the most widely used mobile app providers globally, incorporating 1,728,255 applications.

One of the most popular types of digital products is games- Apple Store offers 984,000 in total. This category covers 21.8% of the whole market. Business and education are the second and third categories in demand and popularity. The apps that can be downloaded free of charge cover 92.3% of the entire iOS market.

What’s more, iOS applications, as well as game profit, have raised by 17.7% in the previous year to $85.1 billion. The primary definition of this platform’s potential is also the fact that it has embraced 63% of the entire digital product income within 2021.

According to the insights of Statista, in February of the current year, mobile-first entertainment platform TikTok was the most demanded Apple solution in the entire App Store globally, bringing approximately $37.66 million of profit. The next most used application is Tinder, generating $23.68 million of income. Honor of Kings is the third gaming solution, the revenue of which is equal to over $22 million from Apple devices’ users.

The main profitable sides of this platform are the following:

Higher product income

Apple solutions have a higher ROI in comparison with the ones offered by Google Play. In practice, iOS users tend to make higher financial investments in applications’ purchases or performing them in the product itself.

Solid security

When it comes to applications processing sensitive user data or the one generated by the business workflow, it’s vital to have reliable protection from hackers’ intrusions. For this goal, iOS-based products offer the solutions below:

• Incorporated data processing systems
• Security precautions to liquidate information duplication
• Methodologies engaging which the possibility of safety losses are eliminated due to data encryption

Due to the reasons above, Apple customers have their data fully protected, which increases the apps’ trustworthiness.

High requirements

iOS product architecture for companies remains unfinished till the solution complies with the top-quality standards of the App Store prior to being deployed and accessible for download. According to this, any solution installed on the iOS device has smooth performance, delivering a seamless experience to its users. Such a strategy developed by iOS has substantially extended the Apple client base as well as raised the company’s demand.

Tech-engaged consumers

Apple clients tend to be more tech-ready and engaged in state-of-art solutions as well as digitalization. It delivers companies with expanded capabilities to build sophisticated and exciting products, innovative for the whole industry. Businesses that choose iOS applications’ development have a huge potential from the start and can become sought-after in the shortest time possible.

Quick time-to-market

Regarding the development time, it’s vital to emphasize that iOS product architecture requires approximately 28% less time in contrast with Android solutions of the exact requirements and parameters. This is conditioned by the fact that Android-based products have to be verified within 20 devices minimally with ranging resolutions, screen sizes, and platform updates. This requirement is eliminated with iOS app development.

iOS is the platform with the highest standards for application development, requiring flawless product quality from the start. Such solid requirements predetermine the corresponding security, user experience, performance robustness, and overall product level. iOS applications are excellent for your business expansion, and the platform’s legacy allows rapidly entering the market and engaging the audience. User-friendliness is the integral feature of the OS’s concept, which also positively impacts your product quality and delivers higher revenue in turn.

Applications tend to work faster and may function without the internet connection. Nowadays, people are quite spoilt with attractive and user-friendly design. Users tend to spend more time on beautiful and understandable products. That’s why it’s important to give users what they want. For instance, The New York Times has a responsive website for quality online presence and a mobile application to bring users a choice.

As you can see, there is more content and better navigation on the app. Additionally, The New York Times app offers personalized articles for the uses of the mobile app. So nowadays you have no choice but to be responsive. Additionally, if you want to gain more users and increase your revenue, it’s necessary to convert your webpage to an iOS app.

Insights state that by 2023 the yearly number of global app downloads will be equal to 299 billion, which is much higher in comparison to roughly 247 billion worldwide app downloads in 2020.

Native apps represent the specific architecture type tailored to a certain single platform utilizing appropriate OS programming languages and tech stack.

iOS native applications operate only on Apple devices, respectively. Choosing such an approach for the product architecture, tech experts go for the native-to-the-operating-system programming language to build solutions that are appropriate for the one specific OS- may it relate to mobile devices, desktops, smart TVs, or any other progressive products being applied in the tech area.

The platform for Apple gadgets iOS requires sufficient tech expertise in programming languages like Objective-C and Swift. Native mobile app architecture is a perfect choice in case you strive to provide your customers with the highest satisfaction rate within the interface and interactions with the product. The native architecture ensures availability to expand the app’s functionality and capabilities. This is due to the fact that the products of this type comprise the capability to leverage fundamental device hardware components like GPS, Proximity sensors, camera, microphone, etc.

The main specific feature of cross-platform apps is designing the single code and reapplying it for a range of platforms. This approach allows substantially cuts down the architecture investments as well as the whole development time.

This approach ensures the opportunity to provide great operation, yet, access to native apps’ features is lacking. Therefore, it’s an excellent way to build an application with limited functionality yet, cover more audience, and provide accessibility for multiple OSs from a single code at lower financial investments.

Cross-platform applications are on-demand nowadays, so the number of necessary frameworks keeps rising: React Native, Xamarin, and Flutter are the most popular ones.

This type of app building is the conjunction of native and web products in which app architecture specialists have to apply the script developed with the programming languages like CSS, HTML, and JavaScript into a native app using plugins, such as Ionic’s Capacitor, Apache Cordova, and the others that allow receiving the implementation of native features.

The architecture of hybrid apps includes primarily two main elements, which are a backend script and a native viewer, the main purpose of which is to represent the functionality as well as the backend.

When choosing this type, developers can design a code one time and apply it to build products for numerous platforms. Hybrid solutions have an operation close to the native apps. However, the client experience, as well as business logic, is decreased.

Building a customized iOS application can bring several significant benefits to your business. It’s high time to outline some of them.

Personalized user experience

Native iOS applications offer users perfect UX and performance. Additionally, mobile applications always provide better personalization in comparison to websites. The iOS app can analyze the users’ behavior and engagement. After that, it gives recommendations based on this data. Moreover, applications can track the customers’ location and offer geography-related content.

Opportunity to use the device’s built-in features

If you create an app for a specific platform and follow all OS guidelines, the user interacts with an app in a more natural way laying on the intuition. Moreover, such kind of applications can utilize all the features of the operating system and hardware, e.g microphone, camera, GPS, and more.

Scalability

Creating an iOS app from scratch, you get an opportunity to modify the application. As a result, it’s quite easy to integrate a new feature or improve an existing one. Moreover, a scalable iOS application provides a chance to fix bugs faster.

Security

Since web applications rely on various browsers and technologies, e.g. JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS, they can’t guarantee full protection. On the other hand, mobile applications are secure and can protect all users’ personal information. It’s possible to integrate multi-factor authentication in an iOS app. So, if your business requires a lot of personal data, the security should be your priority.

Increased customer engagement

One more benefit of creating an iOS application from a website is gaining more users. Since applications are more convenient to utilize, customers will spend more time on the apps. As a result, you can achieve better results, like increasing revenue per user, and so on.

To sum up, if you want to make an iOS app from a website, it’s better to develop a native application that will bring better interaction, high-security level, and so on.

If you google ‘how to convert a website to an iOS app’, you will see that there are a lot of online converters. These services offer you to turn an existing website into an iOS application. However, you may not be happy with the end result. Usually, such platforms simply place a site into a WebView-wrapper. Therefore, the UX isn’t so great as with native apps and your users will be likely looking for an alternative elsewhere. Additionally, you have to keep in mind that there is no opportunity to change such kind of application (e.g. add another feature).

According to the company’s guidelines, Apple tends to reject apps of this type. They prefer to publish useful app with unique features. So, unformatted for iOS web content can be a reason for rejection. This strategy isn’t the right way of gaining new users or getting revenue. However, there is an alternative solution. It’s better to cooperate with an experienced iOS app development company that follows all your requirements and can develop an application that meets your customers' expectations.

Cooperating with a highly-qualified iOS engineer, you have an opportunity to create a unique product that will boost your business. There are three strategies that you and your developer can follow:

1. Figure out the vital features and create an iOS application.
2. Develop an app that has the same features that the website does.
3. Build an iOS application with several specific functions.

It’s only up to you what strategy to follow. The choice always depends on your goals and expectations.

Let's dive deeper into the primary steps to take to convert website to iPhone app:

Of course, your website has many interesting functions, but some of them can be useless for an iOS application. So, you need to divide the features into two parts — primary and secondary ones. The first group is obligatory for the app, while the second one is optional. For instance, such parts as Blog or About the Company can be omitted, or you can add a link to their web-versions.

The estimation stage provides you the information about the required amount of money and time. Additionally, some documentation needs to be prepared at this stage. These papers have data about all the required features and how they should work.

The app design needs to follow some aspects of your website’s design, e.g. color palette style, fonts, and more. However, many elements have to be reorganized to achieve the best user experience.

During the iOS application development, your engineers need to use such programming languages as Objective-C or Swift. Additionally, Apple provides several development tools, interface elements, and SDKs. The required time depends on the complexity of your project, the tech stack, and the developers’ experience.

After fixing all the bugs and adding the improvements, it’s high time to release your iOS application. Some guidelines can assist you in publishing the application to the App Store. At Cleveroad we assist clients with submitting applications at their request.

Mobile application development can be divided into types — native and hybrid. The main difference between them is that native apps are built for one specific platform. As a result, there is a set of tools that the iOS engineer needs to choose for development. Hybrid app building allows using one code base for various platforms. Simply saying, hybrid applications are websites that tend to look and function like a native ones. However, there is one big drawback: it’s necessary to have constant Internet connection to use hybrid apps properly.

So, what kind of app to create? Native applications provide rich user experience. As a result, users can navigate more intuitively. Additionally, they are flexible due to access to all the hardware features of the device. Native iOS applications offer to create custom features, performance, and good design.

The best way to convert a website into an iOS application is to develop an app from scratch. The final success will depend on the experience and expertise of the chosen IT partner. And Cleveroad is your reliable assistant in creating user-friendly iOS applications. With more than 10 years of experience, during which we’ve successfully accomplished 170+ successful projects. Our iOS app development services include:

• Delivering iPhone/iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV apps performing across all the devices and iOS versions to ensure 100% user satisfaction.
• iOS solutions based on native programming languages like Swift and Objective-C to provide superior performance.
• Apple resources involved: frameworks, app services (Apple Pay, HealthKit, HomeKit, CloudKit), media and web, graphics and games (ARKit, SceneKit, OpenGL).

You can find app developers for a startup with one of our three adjustable cooperation models:

• Time and material. We give a client an approximate estimation of the scope and start a project without having an exact scope of work in hand. We plan each sprint and agree on all the project details with the client. According to this approach, we can make changes even in the middle of the software development process.
• Fixed Price. This model implies a fixed scope of work, detailed estimations, precise requirements, and strict deadlines.
• Dedicated team. This type of contract is the right solution for large-scale and complex projects. We agree on cooperation terms and submit software developers to the client's project.

Welcome to look through our portfolio with developed projects and study clients’ reviews on Clutch and GoodFirms.