Your icon on the customer's phone

Why an icon on the phone beats a link

A booking link lives in a chat thread and gets lost. To book again, the customer digs through messages, opens your social profile or types your name into a search engine, where competitors and shared catalogues sit next to you. An app in the stores solves this, but few people download a separate app for a specialist they visit once a month, and development plus publishing in the App Store and Google Play cost money and time.

Now your page itself becomes an app on the customer's phone. What it gives you:

• Recognition. Your avatar sits on the home screen next to messengers and the bank, and the customer sees it every day, even when not booking.
• Repeat bookings. A free slot is one tap away instead of a search for the link. The shorter the path, the more often the customer comes back to you rather than to whoever showed up first in search.
• Loyalty. An installed app is a place the customer set aside for you on their phone. That is a different level of relationship than a link in the browser history.
• Easier communication. In the app the customer sees their bookings and orders, confirms the visit and replies in chat, while reminders and replies arrive as notifications on the phone.
• No app stores. No development to order, no App Store and Google Play review to pass, no updates to wait for: the customer installs the page straight from the browser in three taps.
• Just like real apps. The icon follows the iPhone and Android rules: corner radius, safe zone, a shadow under the avatar. On the screen it looks no different from icons that came from the stores.

What the customer sees

1. 1The customer opens your page from a link in a social network or messenger, or from a QR code. The install page has an Install without downloading button; on a phone the instructions for iPhone or Android appear by themselves, and on a computer a QR code next to the button opens the page on the phone.
2. 2On iPhone the customer taps Share in Safari and then Add to Home Screen; on Android, Install app in the Chrome menu. An icon with your avatar appears on the home screen.
3. 3On first launch the app offers to sign in: after that the customer has a My bookings and orders section, visit confirmation and notifications about reminders and chat replies.
4. 4From then on booking, shopping and chat open from the home screen in one tap, like in any app.

How to choose the icon

The icon is built from the company avatar and a background. The avatar is required: without it the app cannot be installed, so the tile will offer to upload one.

1. 1Open Settings in your account and find the App icon tile: it shows how your storefront looks on the home screen of a phone.
2. 2Pick a background in the strip: Space, Solid, Gradient, Sunrise, Glass, Paper, Charcoal, Orbits, Dots or Aurora. Presets are saved with one tap.
3. 3Need your own colour? Tap Fine-tune: background, a colour from the palette or by code, the logo size (your avatar on the icon: 50 to 80% of the side, within the iPhone and Android icon rules), the background shadow and the icon shadow. Tap Save, and it becomes your custom icon.

Good to know

• The phone stores the icon at the moment of installation and it cannot be changed remotely. On iPhone a new icon appears only after the app is reinstalled; Android updates it on its own with a delay. So choose the look before you invite customers to install.
• On iPhone the installation goes through Safari, and notifications on iPhone arrive only from the installed app. One more reason to invite customers to put your page on their phone.
• The app works at the same link as the page: nothing changes in your social profiles, QR codes and business cards.
• Until a customer installs the app, everything works as before: the page opens in the browser.

How others do it

With booking services an own client app is usually a separate service. YCLIENTS offers a branded mobile app in the App Store and Google Play, DIKIDI a branded app built to order for iOS and Android, while the shared DIKIDI Online app is a catalogue of many businesses under the DIKIDI icon. Terms and prices of these services change, so check them on the official pages linked here.

In Flowlyup the app with your icon is part of the free Start plan: no development, no store publishing, no separate fee.

Plan

Installing the app, the icon with your avatar on the Space background and the client account are available on every plan, including the free Start. The other nine presets and the custom icon with your colour and shadows are part of the Plus plan at 990 ₽ per month, as are booking reminders, online chat and the store, whose notifications arrive in the installed app. For the first 14 days after sign-up Plus is free with no card required.