Your Morning Basket Increased Activity and Launched The Perfect Mobile Platform with MobiLoud Canvas

Pam Barnhill created Your Morning Basket to support parents who choose the homeschooling route for their children. The platform provides a huge range of information, helpful resources and a thriving community of users that helps homeschooling parents take full control of their kids' education.

But as her audience shifted to a new generation of parents, Pam had to think about how this new audience preferred to consume content. She realized that for a lot of users, accessing material via the website was a sub-standard user experience.

So she looked to mobile apps, and MobiLoud. The result? A resounding positive response from her customers, and a launch process that was easier than Pam ever thought was possible.

Why Mobile Apps?

"We delivered so much of our material via PDF documents, and moms would navigate it using a web browser or Adobe. We were discovering that  younger moms would tend to do everything on their phones. They'd struggle with our products, and would mention that it was not easy for them to navigate, find links and click on them."

Pam's biggest issue was one that leads a lot of business owners to seek out a solution like MobiLoud.

More and more people today like to do their browsing and content consumption on mobile. So for online businesses built primarily for desktop, the user experience is left wanting.

The younger generation was on mobile, and gave feedback that the site wasn't easy to get around on their phones. Delivering content via PDFs wasn't cutting it, neither was accessing additional resources, such as podcasts, or participating in the community.

Pam's Concerns Around Launching Mobile Apps

"Apps were initially on my 5 year business plan, but the cost I was thinking about was actually huge."

It wasn't a snap decision to launch mobile apps. The idea had been on Pam's horizon for some time. Only, she imagined this would be a long-term project.

Building apps from scratch is expensive, and takes a long time to come to fruition. Pam knew that. She also knew that there were a lot of moving parts when it came to replicating the website experience in an app, which would add a layer of complexity to the project.

"What MobiLoud pulled together for me is actually a domain and two subdomains, with an SSO running in the background with the Auth plugin, and I was really skeptical if we could make it work in the apps."

Pam understood the value of building an app, but also wanted to ensure that when they launched, it was something that their users were going to love.

How MobiLoud Made it So Easy

"The fact that I was able to do it at a tiny fraction of the cost of getting a custom app built was almost like a Christmas miracle."

The goal: to build out a platform that allowed them to cater to mobile users.

There are no shortage of options to do this, but as Pam would find out, not all suited their needs. They didn't just need a content delivery platform, but a solution that let them retain their brand image.

"We found something that would help us deliver content that was mobile-friendly, but we didn't want it to be branded as that platform. We needed a white-label app.

To get that, without the huge cost of a custom app build, Pam looked at services that work like MobiLoud does - encasing their existing web platform in a mobile app wrapper.

Yet many of these options came off to her as cheap and unreliable.

"I did look at other websites that mentioned they could do a web wrap for us, but honestly, their pricing was so low that I was very skeptical. They were also going to build it and just give it back to us."

With MobiLoud, she got more than just an app built. MobiLoud offered the above-and-beyond service to ensure that everything about the app worked as Pam wanted it to.

"What really appealed to me about MobiLoud was that you guys are there to fix things if something goes wrong. From looking at the reviews, I knew I was going to get the level of support that I wanted."

In her own words, MobiLoud "almost seemed too good to be true".

The Results - Near-Perfect Reviews, Activity Doubled

"You guys made everything happen and got them approved and most importantly, my customers are happy. It was exactly what we wanted and we got it."

With MobiLoud handling the build and app store submission, there was very little for Pam's team to do.

"My project was a bit more complicated with the subdomains but we were able to put those into the app with SSO, and all I had to do was fill out the initial paperwork!"

The result was essentially a perfect solution. Your Morning Basket's mobile apps provided a way for a new generation of parents to consume content easily and with less friction, all without a massive investment or complicated upkeep.

Their customers love it - with the app scoring a near-perfect score through 51 reviews on the Apple App Store.

Even better, their activity metrics are up across the board, showing the app is having the desired effect of getting users more engaged with the platform.

"The initial purpose of the app was to serve the audience we already had. By the end of the summer, we expect our activity to have doubled."

If you're on the fence about building mobile apps for your business, because you think it's going to be too expensive, or you haven't found a solution you're happy with, get in touch with us.

We can arrange a demo to show how MobiLoud can elevate your business and help you enter the mobile app space, with a significantly lower investment than custom app builds.

MobiLoud is more than just an app builder - we're a service. We'll work with you, hand in hand, to help you build the perfect mobile apps.