Interested in building a mobile app for your company, but worried it’ll take way too much time and effort to manage? 

It doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, we tell our Tapcart customers they only need to set aside one hour a week to manage their app because Tapcart integrates directly with your Shopify store, meaning your app automatically syncs with your store’s backend. This allows you to instantly “drag and drop” products, collections, tags, content, and more from your online store on your mobile app. It’s literally so easy to launch a new mobile sales channel in 2023. 

Still not convinced? Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about maintaining a mobile app with Tapcart.

Here’s what’s in store:

1. On average, how much time per week is dedicated to maintaining the app?
2. How difficult is creating, designing, and updating the app with new collections and content?
3. Is there any additional headcount required to manage the app?
4. How hands-on is Tapcart in helping brands deliver the experience they want? 
5. How seamlessly does the app update with brands’ Shopify stores?

On average, how much time per week is dedicated to maintaining the app?

Once again, with a Tapcart app, you’re looking at no more than one hour a week of app maintenance. 

So why are Tapcart apps so seamless to add to your workflow, while other customer-built apps require an in-house team to manage? Two reasons. 

First, a Tapcart app is a true extension of your Shopify store that can be easily and intuitively managed within your Shopify dashboard. Tapcart integrates directly with your Shopify store, automatically pulling your store’s backend to your mobile app. 

Second, you have the expertise of your Tapcart team a Slack, email, or phone call away. Tapcart’s five-star Customer Success team leans on its mobile app marketing expertise to help brands launch their apps in the Apple and Google Play stores. With the Enterprise plan, merchants get access to a dedicated account manager with the goal of helping brands reach their goals and scale. 

As for that one hour a week on your team’s to-do list? Expect to spend time:

• Making simple updates — like preparing for new product launches — by simply clicking and dragging selections from your Shopify store into your app. 
• Generating push notifications within Tapcart or leveraging Klaviyo’s automated workflows to do the same.

According to Neal Goyal, Tapcart's own Enterprise Team Lead, "The goal of the Tapcart app is to minimize lift and allow you to just spend your time designing and focusing on the app experience itself, which can be done in a click-and-drag fashion in a matter of minutes."

How difficult is creating, designing, and updating the app with new collections and content?

Exactly how easy is it to prepare your app to display new collections and content?

Tapcart is structured as a plug-in to your Shopify store. (It’s literally an independent sales channel that lives on the left-hand side of your Shopify dashboard.) So yes, while your app is a unique mobile platform, its backend will always be in conversation with Shopify, seeking new products, collections, descriptions, pricing discounts, and more in real time. 

What does all that mean for you? Quite simply, nearly no duplicate work for you or your team. With Tapcart, it’s easy to self-manage updates by allowing the app and Shopify store to sync, or by leveraging existing Klaviyo images and social media assets and porting them into ultra-effective push notifications. 

Our advice? Take the best of what’s already working and drop that content into a flow. 

And if you want to save even more time, try TapAI —Tapcart’s artificial intelligence tool that automatically creates different variations of push notification copy in whatever personality and tone you’d like. 

Is there any additional headcount required to manage the app?

Tapcart customer Art of Tea launched its app in July 2020. Hanna Houglum, the Executive Director of Growth and Strategy, managed the app — along with a ton of other responsibilities. In her words, a brand only needs a “sixteenth of a person” to manage the app. Plus, the company’s gross merchandise value (GMV) results were, for lack of a better word, insane.

Our promise? While your app will do a ton to increase customer retention, lifetime value (LTV), average order value (AOV), and more, one thing it will not do is become another website. 

What we mean by that is with Tapcart, you won’t be getting another platform that requires constant attention. Instead, Tapcart will work alongside your existing Shopify store to help you sell more products and connect more closely with your customers. 

As for who on your team should manage the app for that one hour each week, the choice is yours. Typically, larger brands tap whoever handles the retention strategy alongside an eCommerce director, and smaller brands turn to whoever handles email marketing. Managing the app is so intuitive, even an intern can do it.

Usually, this person is just doing a little tweaking, like optimizing content, creative, deals, and copy for mobile.

How hands-on is Tapcart in helping brands deliver the experience they want? 

And if you ever find that an update you desire is more complex than a simple drag-and-drop, call us. Tapcart's team is here to help —from helping you launch the app to building your first push notification campaign. 

When you build an app with Tapcart, you’ll get access to the Implementation Team. These resources will help you navigate the world of the Apple App Store & Google Play Store to help you launch your app smoothly. On top of that, you'll get mobile app marketing strategies tested by the fastest-growing Shopify brands.

LSKD was initially skeptical about the logistics of running a mobile app, until the team quickly realized how intuitive Tapcart’s mobile app platform was. The company’s eCommerce manager even noted that updating content on the app is easier than on the website. 

“The process to set [the Tapcart app] up was so seamless. We were up and running in three to four weeks. It usually takes six months to a year or more to build a comprehensive app like ours—to have that at our fingertips and to have so much support, it was foolproof.”
James Rue, Ecommerce Manager @ LSKD

After all, Tapcart has helped over 3,000 brands monetize their apps. We can tell you what works and what doesn’t, then show you precisely how to implement these best practices to get more return on your app investment. 

With the Tapcart Enterprise plan, you get access to your own dedicated Account Manager. Your Account Manager plays a crucial role in optimizing your mobile app, bringing forth a multitude of benefits. Prior to launch, they will collaborate closely with the brand, sharing industry best practices for app marketing and tailoring a launch plan specifically designed for your brand to boost sales and downloads. Together, you and your account manager will set clear goals and objectives to ensure you see success on the platform.

How seamlessly does the app update with brands’ Shopify stores?

Your Tapcart app is an extension of your Shopify store. And we mean that literally— the app sits as a sales channel within your Shopify dashboard and syncs directly to your online store. 

The user experience could not be easier. 

Take it from Neal, who explains, “let's say you have a new product coming out next week. How do you send that app change live in tandem with your website? That's a function of click, drag, and scheduling. You don't have to be in front of the dashboard when you want to deploy that design change. All of this is automated.”

Not to mention Tapcart integrates with a full suite of integrations so you can pull in your favorite tools. From loyalty programs, subscriptions, Klaviyo's workflows, and additional pay options — we got you.

For brands that want to further optimize their app, with Custom Blocks, merchants are empowered to customize with low-code to create unique shopping experiences. From HTML, CSS, and Javascript, your brand’s developer can easily go in and create custom experiences to give customers more of what they love. This can be anything from embedding media, creating personalized shopping banners or building a product recommendation block, to name a few. 

So to summarize, adding a mobile app to your marketing mix is quite seamless with our Shopify integration. If you’re an ecommerce marketer and want to be the hero for your brand, adding an app is a light lift considering the powerful impact to your bottom line. 

If you want to learn more about why the fastest growing Shopify brands are launching apps, let’s chat. Tapcart’s team of mobile experts can help you see if an app is a right fit for your business.