Can you please develop an App for accessing storiesonline on a phone?
It would boost readership hugely
Can you please develop an App for accessing storiesonline on a phone?
It would boost readership hugely
I agree with you, but then I pretty much just carry my phone for use in emergencies and the occasional text message. Oh, and checking the weather report. Everything else is my tablet, and that includes reading in bed at night.
I have to update here. I just tried on my phone, and it's not bad. I wouldn't do it often, but in a pinch it would work. It is just like I said though - I almost always have my tablet with me as well. And if I can't find any Wi-Fi I can always hot spot my phone. I have enough minutes built up to last me a while. :-)
Creating a cross platform App using a WebView is really cheap (less than 500USD) and there a plenty of existing App template to choose from. Maintaining it however, can be time consuming.
Making a website more compatible with WebView isn't difficult. Supporting offline reading can be a bit more tricky.
I don't think it would boost readership that much.
The only real way to explode the audience would be by removing the login requirement.
That may lead to problem for adult content but quite a few adult site do it.
The only reason other website choose to develop and promote an app would be to increase ad revenue (but this site isn't ad supported). And the only reason an App would increase ad revenue is because users can't have ad blocker and can't really be anonymous with an app so the ad targeting is better. Global ad revenue for mobile app continue to soar but revenue for sane app respecting users have cratered...
It's true however, that the epub/zip/etc downloads options currently available requires the user to be quite tech savvy if he want to read offline on a mobile device.
If Lazeez want to better cater to paying (non paying?) offline mobile readers, he can do so by tweaking the website either via a preload button (it can be unreliable with cache eviction (a problem the app using webview can avoid) or via a single html page with fake paging using sections. That would allow using the build in page download feature on mobile browsers That feature is reliable for offline browsing and work seamlessly (it just requires that the story be a single page).
Why use an app, when the site can be viewed via a browser? If you want to read stories offline, that can already be done by taking out premium membership and downloading the stories you want to cache. Or do you have privacy concerns while using a browser on your phone/tablet?
I just find trying to access SOL on my phone cumbersome and somewhat aggravating. The only half way decent usage is if I rotate my phone to horizontal, which had its own problems. And since when I am in a situation where I want to access SOL away from my PC I usually have my tablet as well. And if I need online access my phone does hotspot. 😁
That's odd, the mobile version of the site is quite good and designed for vertical use (it works horizontal too).
Are you sure you did not accidentally configure your mobile browser to require the "desktop version" ? In that case, your dektop/tablet version would be the same as the one on mobile. That would be mostly unusable and require constant zoom in/out.
I save interesting stories/updates to my desktop daily. I periodically copy all the files I have accumulated to my tablet. As I said, I usually just carry a phone so I am reachable 24/7.
I have to admit I did try it today. It is usable, but only if my PC AND tablet were not available. As I said, I would rather hotspot off my phone and use my tablet if I didn't already have it downloaded.
I read this site quite often outside the house and other than it is small for reading and my 67year eyesight do fine
sorry, I was being stupid - had never actually tried it on a phone browser - it works just fine.
My 72-year-old eyesight copes well enough (with reading glasses).
asked the question on behalf of a user without a PC or tablet.
It's also customizable. You can increase the font size in the listings and in the stories' display.