Why iPhone Apps Can Drive Traffic to Your Site

Applications for the Apple iPhone – often referred to as Apps – can help drive significantly more traffic to your web site in a number of ways. Here’s why:

1.) You can create apps that make it less difficult to use your web site on an iPhone. For example, PayPal offers an application that enables phone users to easily conduct transactions in their accounts. FedEx and USA Today provide similar programs.

2.) Offering specialized iPhone apps for download on your site can also drive more traffic to it, even if they are non-Internet applications (like games). Fewer apps exist for it than the major systems like Windows and Linux, so it isn’t as hard to compete for traffic.

3.) Programmers can submit their free or commercial apps to Apple for inclusion in the iTunes App Store. If successful, this has the potential to drive much more traffic to the associated web site and expose many Apple users to it for the first time.

4.) Applications which refer to or interface with your web site remind people to continue using it, making them more likely to become repeat visitors. Gaining regular repeat users is far preferable to always having to attract new visitors.

Why is this important? In early 2008, Nielsen Mobile estimated that approximately 2,300,000 Americans use the iPhone and about eighty-two percent of them connect to the Internet with it. Such a large number of users offer great potential for web site traffic and sales.

iPhone ownership also likely indicates that a user is willing to purchase fairly expensive products and services, which adds to the value of working to enhance iPhone-based traffic.

Many such apps also work on the iPod Touch, a somewhat less costly alternative to the iPhone. Ensuring compatibility with the Touch should drive additional traffic to your site.