MobiLoud Helped Kazderni Generate 400k Downloads and Dominate their Market

Booking app Kazderni had a great idea to make a splash in app-centric Lebanon. But they ran into roadblocks in the app development process that threatened to hold them back, or worse, derail them completely.

They’re now the #1 travel and tourism app in Lebanon, and have done so without taking on the cost and complexity of developing and maintaining native apps.

We talked to Mohamad, Kazderni’s CEO, about their journey, and how MobiLoud helped them reach the top.

Kazderni’s Story: Launching an Airbnb-Type App for the Lebanon Market

Kazderni is an Airbnb-style booking app specifically designed for the Lebanese market, leveraging the country's unique geography and tourism appeal.

The app allows users to find and book guesthouses, as well as restaurants, taxis and a wide variety of activities in the country.

Naturally, a business like this is designed to be mobile-first. They needed people to be able to find and access Kazderni via the web, but the market in Lebanon leaned heavily in favor of apps, so launching and maintaining a high-quality app was priority number one moving forward.

The Challenge

Mohamad faced a tough decision on how to move forward with developing the app.

The marketing plan and roadmap were both app-first. However, he recognized that building mobile apps, even using cross-platform frameworks like Flutter and React Native, was so much more complex than building apps on the web.

“My case is very unique because a lot of what I needed had to be custom made. I know how complex it is to build apps. As an example, a sign-in module needs a week of development and testing. But I can install a plugin on WordPress and it's done.”

To complicate matters further, Mohamad’s team from an earlier development attempt had failed him, leaving him in a hole and with a tight timeline to get a product out there.

The Solution

Mohamad’s day-to-day was overflowing with the tasks of running his team, and managing the app.

He knew he couldn’t manage two teams (one for the web and one for the app). And with the complexity and time investment it took to build and maintain apps, the only option forward was to keep working from the website and find a way to convert that into an app.

“I thought, the easiest way is if I can find a WordPress theme that does what I need, and find a way to reliably turn it into an app. I found 20, 30 companies that did this. I read some reviews, I talked to some of them. And, I'll be honest with you, MobiLoud was easily the most expensive. But I knew some of them didn't work, and some of them were kind of, ‘you're on your own.’ Something went wrong, the app store changed a particular library? Best of luck to you, you had to figure that out on your own.”

The hybrid app approach allowed for faster development, easier maintenance, and the ability to leverage existing WordPress plugins and features.

As mentioned, there were many options that did this for WordPress sites, but most made big claims, flaunted attractive pricing, but would lead to headaches down the road.

MobiLoud proved the best solution to turn their web app into mobile apps, coming with the support and care they needed, to be able to focus exclusively on one set of code, without the extra complexity that came with managing an app.

Leading Their Market with 400k+ Downloads

So far, Kazerni’s WordPress to app strategy has worked incredibly well.

Within two years of launching, they have more than 400,000 downloads, putting them at the top of their market.

“17 apps in Lebanon do what we do. We have more downloads than all of them combined.”

Their average session time of roughly eight and a half minutes is more than many other high-profile apps, and this level of engagement is proof that they lose nothing by not building a standalone native app.

All the Benefits of Web and App

Much of the app’s success is down to simplifying their development process, and being able to iterate and build features far quicker than they could with traditional mobile app development.

“Flutter is near-native on both Android and iOS, and you can easily make a web replica of it. But it’s not even about that, it's about these native core features and how difficult it is to develop them on any framework, in comparison to an existing WordPress or Shopify website.”

Instead of spending weeks building and testing each feature for the app, they’re able to leverage the significantly faster development workflow with WordPress and WooCommerce and the ecosystem of tools they provide.

With MobiLoud, they can build features for the web in a fraction of the time, and have these features seamlessly carry over to their mobile apps.

“The web market is just so much more mature, and it's so much easier to build a website than it is to build an app. The web business has a 25-year head start on the app business. And there isn't the complexity of having to build for Android and iOS and then build for the web.”

Launch an App Without the Headache

Kazderni’s business model is app-first, and MobiLoud allowed them to live up to this without getting into the murky waters of native app development.

They now have an app that gives them a new level of credibility - credibility they’ve parlayed not just into new users, but also key partnerships that move their business forward, and have them thinking about expanding into neighboring markets.

Mohamad describes an app as “the ultimate piece of free marketing” - a billboard that sits on the user’s phone all day, and helps set them apart from the free for all of the booking app market.

MobiLoud was the catalyst that let them do it, in a short space of time and with none of the headaches that come from juggling multiple platforms.

If you think the time is right to enter the mobile app market, get in touch with us. No matter what platform you’re on, no matter what your goals, MobiLoud will help you build amazing apps while adding virtually nothing to your operational workflow.