Why we built an app to SMS links.
LinkTexting.com is LaunchRock for Mobile Apps.
Reason 1: We download apps. Not just a few apps, but hundreds.
Brian and I both download hundreds of apps every month on our iPhones and Androids. Brian runs a mobile analytics venture at Vue Analytics and I do contracting on growth stuff for tech ventures. We do this to stay competitive and because we both love seeing new technologies as well as building them.
Reason 2: The Number of apps launched every day is dizzying.
There are 500+ launched every day in the iOS and Android app store every day. All of them need distribution.
Reason 3: Your users are drunk. One of the best ways to increase downloads to your app is making it easy to download when users hit the desktop site. Leave no room for distraction.
Having a simple form that will send an SMS with a download link to your mobile phone is of utter importance. It moves you closer to the landing page optimality.
Reason 4: Having this form leads to more downloads. Period.
There’s millions of users who access mobile app websites through desktop. One of our favorite apps, Washio, does a great job of this. We can’t disclose figures or name customers, but when our customers implement it on their websites, they see hundreds to thousands of downloads coming straight from desktop viewers. SMS open rates exceed 99%.
Building this form yourself is a painful but necessary evil. You should be talking to customers and building your product instead of building this. Let us do it for you.
Making this SMS form requires an understanding of an SMS API and will take your developer an average of 1 to 6 hours to make, style, add analytics to, etc…...
Reading SMS API documentation, writing code, adding click analytics, and configuring back end services all takes valuable time away from talking to users and building product.
We wanted to make the implementation of SMS forms dead simple.
With linktexting.com you can build an SMS form and get embed code in minutes without having any coding knowledge.
Donating 25% of proceeds to our favorite 2 non-profits.
Brian and I were both eating sandwiches one day and I conjectured that it might be cool if we worked with non-profits, he agreed. We’re donating 25% of proceeds to Watsi and MissionBit, our 2 favorite non-profits.
Watsi saves lives.
Watsi is a non-profit website that enables anyone to fund life-changing healthcare for people around the world. 100% of every donation funds care and Watsi is committed to radical transparency. I’ve been a monthly donor for the last few months. Kudos to their hard life changing work.
MissionBit — MissionBit teaches kids to code.
We’re big fans of both of these non-profits and have donated volunteer hours and even money to both. Brian was a key member in founding MissionBit and finds time to teach kids to code, even in his busy schedule.
Coming Soon….
We’ll be adding analytics and a series of other features in the coming days.
We don’t think this is the next big company or anything crazy. We think it solves a problem and does a good thing by helping a non-profit.
Thinking of making an app that donates proceeds to a non-profit?
Feel free to tweet either me or Brian if you have an idea/need help or want to talk shop about mobile apps.