Since Facebook is THE website where people spend most of their time online, creating a Facebook app and then using it to drive traffic to your site and offers might just be the right idea.
The creation process of such an app itself is not that complicated, which we’re about to show you here.
How to Make An App On Facebook
Before you can even start creating your new app, you have to validate your Facebook account. These days, Facebook wants to be sure that every app has been created by a real person, so it provides two ways for you to prove that you are one. You can either confirm your mobile phone or add a credit card number (Facebook won’t charge it or anything).
Once you’re done with that, start by going to https://developers.facebook.com/ and clicking the Apps link in the top bar:
The next screen presents something like your apps dashboard. All you have to do here is click the big + Create New App button.
In this first step of creating an app all you have to do is choose a name for your app. You can ignore the other two fields.
The next step is about providing the basic details of your new app.
The elements you should pay attention to here are:
- Display Name– it’s the name of your app. You can change it at this point.
- Namespace – it’ll be the address of your app. Facebook makes your app available at: http://apps.facebook.com/namespace/.
- App Domains– the domain you want to connect with Facebook. Preferably the address of your website.
- Sandbox Mode – if you want to make the app available to the world, check Disabled.
- Canvas URL – this field is inside the App on Facebooksection. It defines the URL that’s going to be taken and then loaded within an iframe on your app’s page.
- Canvas Width and Canvas Height – the fields define the size of your app’s canvas. You can play around with them for a bit, but you can also stick to the default values.
When you click Save Changes your app is good to go.
Now, if you navigate to http://apps.facebook.com/namespace/ you will see your app in its magnificence. Strictly speaking, it’s just your website displayed as a Facebook app. However, such a structure allows you to do many cool things promotion-wise.
Facebook Promotion Through Apps
One of the main things you can do is instead of using the homepage URL of your site, point the app directly to a specific landing page. On this landing page you can showcase some offers that are tailor-made for Facebook users. Many online casinos have some social media bonuses or other offers that can be successfully used here.
One more idea is to drive people directly to your email subscription landing page. The only difficulty is to showcase an offer that resonates with the Facebook audience. You can, for example, offer some extra bonuses only for people joining through Facebook.
Apart from that, you get one more benefit. It is the fact that your website is now, kind of, a part of Facebook, which gives you the possibility to promote it more effectively through some of the native Facebook methods, including their advertising platform.
Moreover, some users are going to be more likely to visit an URL that’s within the main facebook.com domain, rather than going to an external domain. It seems more trustworthy. Besides, by now people are very used to the concept of apps inside their Facebook News Feeds.
Advanced Settings
This website-in-app model is not the only method of constructing apps. There are many more advanced techniques. The topic is a really extensive one so if you want to learn more, we advise you to check out the official documentation available at: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/.