So you have an app for Windows 8 or maybe even an app for iOS. How great would it be if someone was searching inside of IE on Windows 8 or Safari on iOS that when they got to your website it had an option to download and install it easily. They wouldn’t have to search your site for a button, or search the store, with 1 click they are taken directly to the download and install page. Well you can, and it is really easy.
To me it is very odd that a lot of sites just don’t do this already. For instance Netflix on an iPod:
Not bad there is a button way down on the bottom of the page that opens up to the app store, but I wouldn’t have known it if I didn’t scroll all the way to the bottom. *Interesting though when pressing this button it actually throws an error then takes you to the store.
Let’s look at the Ceton My Media Center Page:
Boom right there, in your face, name, icon, and view right inside of the store. How did I do this? Easy, just add this bit of meta tag in the body o the page you want to display:
meta name="apple-itunes-app" content="app-id=556400658"
With on each side. All you need to change is your app id, which you can get in the dev center, or the URL for your app http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/my-media-center/id556400658?ls=1&mt=8
Alright well what about windows 8? Again here is netflix:
Again nothing at all.. How about the Ceton site:
Right down there we have a “get app for this site”!! Pressing it takes you right to the marketplace:
To do this all you need to do is add some meta tags in the HEAD of your website:
meta name="msApplication-ID" content="Company.AppName"/
meta name="msApplication-PackageFamilyName" content="Company.AppName_packaggestuff"/
Why people aren’t doing this puzzles me!! Microsoft and Apple both have documentation as well!
Promote and market your app easily now!
