Widget to Dashboard to offer Mobile App to users

[oglekler]

Many people are using WordPress for personal blogs and companies employees are more mobile now than ever and solve working tasks on a go from cafés and in public transport. To have an ability to comfortably publishing posts and edit content from mobile phone for some of them can be an advantage.

We have good designed Mobile Application but not using it for its full extent.

After attending 'WordPress Portsmouth Online Meetup – 20th July 2022 – WordPress Mobile Apps' (recording of these meetup can be viewed on YouTube and the Meetup's site), it becomes obvious that we need to put more efforts in promoting it as our marketing advantage. And the easiest way to start is to add a nice and attractive widget to the Dashboard presenting the Mobile Application.

The dashboard widget will be a reminder for developers that this feature can be offered to users as one more plus to choose WordPress in the first place.

[oglekler]

I've uploaded 2 mockups (just above) to see how it can look like on a desktop.

1. Widget title
2. Short description
3. Links to download apps with stores images
4. Link to read more about mobile app usage

I am not sure that we have a dedicated page on the Documentation.
​https://wordpress.org/mobile/ - here we don't have a link and by googling I've got nothing official also.

On mobile, we can recognize used OS and offer purely one App with a link that there is another one, but generally it should be the same widget.

[peterwilsoncc]

Both the ​iOS application and the ​Android application are listed as Automattic products in the respective app stores.

Reviewing the screen shots, they also contain features only available to Jetpack/wordpress.com users. I know there is some work going on to move the Jetpack features to its own application, so I think that needs to be completed and the applications transferred to the WordPress foundation before this is considered.

Design wise, I think the proposal is a little much:

• in terms of content hierarchy, I think it should be below news and events
• it's a little overwhelming, size wise, for a platform that promotes the open web

[SergeyBiryukov]

Thanks for the ticket! Moving to the Administration component, as Widgets is generally for the Appearance → Widgets screen and widget functions.

[siobhyb]

Reviewing the screen shots, they also contain features only available to Jetpack/wordpress.com users. I know there is some work going on to move the Jetpack features to its own application, so I think that needs to be completed and the applications transferred to the WordPress foundation before this is considered.

I wanted to chime in to note that the issue of the screenshots is on the mobile team's radar. There isn't an exact timeframe, but the screenshots will be updated to reflect the current state of the WordPress app at some point in the upcoming months.

Both the iOS application and the Android application are listed as Automattic products in the respective app stores.

In ​this announcement, it was mentioned that Automattic will continue to be listed as the app's publisher, with the following reasoning:

Automattic will continue to be listed as the publisher of the WordPress apps in both the Google Play and Apple App stores. As a company that manages several other apps, Automattic has good processes in place for efficiently handling regular releases. Although there aren’t current plans to change the app’s listing, this could be revisited in the future and other suggestions are welcome.

If there are any further thoughts or questions related to that, it may work best to move the discussion to either the make/mobile blog or the #mobile channel on Slack.

Hope that info is helpful!

Add "WordPress mobile apps" dashboard widget

Trac ticket: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/56277

[oglekler]

Hi @bartkleinreesink thank you for the patch.

I created a PR to your PR with style adjustment. Screenshot with the result is posted above.

We are 10 days away from Beta 1 and because this is an enhancement it should be in the trunk before this moment or will be waiting for a long time.

[oglekler]

Ticket has a patch, it is simple enough and should not have any side effects, it needs additional testing and can go to the trunk, so I am changing Milestone to 6.3 in hope that there is still time to make a commit.

[peterwilsoncc]

As seen in Screen Shot 2023-06-18 at 5.13.23 pm.png​, I think the PR -- should it be accepted -- needs work. The CTAs for mobile are too overwhelming.

---

I also don't think the efforts to decouple the WordPress app from Jetpack/wordpress.com are nearly complete enough for this to proceed.

• Upon downloading the app, the primary CTA is to "log in or sign up with WordPress.com"
• On sites with Jetpack installed, the primary CTA is an add for the commercial Jetpack app -- on my phone it was about 20% of the screen
• Sending tracking analytics is to WordPress.com is enabled by default

If there are any further thoughts or questions related to that, it may work best to move the discussion to either the make/mobile blog or the #mobile channel on Slack.

I think discussing this on make/core would be better. The proposal it to put advertisements for the mobile apps in Core. Discussing the merits of this patch on make/mobile loads the results.

[peterwilsoncc]

I got caught by #58433 (comment) while testing (cached asset), so it's not quite as overwhelming as in the original screen shot.

However, even at the correct size the images are very big. The mobile widget is larger than both the site health and at a glance widgets.

I also think it needs some work to make the advert more obviously dismissable. By default it can be hidden by editing the screen options but I don't suspect the average use is aware of that. WordPress requires similar CTAs by plugin authors be dismissable, so I think it best to follow our own example.

[oglekler]

@peterwilsoncc,
Did you run build? PR was fine, and I adjusted styles a bit additionally, and checked with different screen width as well.

[oglekler]

@peterwilsoncc we can do widgets dismissible, but I believe it needs another ticket and is out of scope for this one.

The minimum size of a link to click comfortably, I believe, is 32px, and we have height of icons here equal to 30px, so, the smallest size for this purpose is used already. Possibly in this case height should be fixed and not width, but until they have the same size, it is fine. Right now it is placed in the bottom of the first column, and it reduces its visibility already, if we will hide this widget by default the whole thing will be completely pointless. The idea of adding this widget to the Dashboard is to raise awareness that mobile applications exist. A lot of users don't know that they can use them, and in times when people manage personal stuff as well as working tasks from mobile devices gives us disadvantage.

[peterwilsoncc]

Did you run build? PR was fine, and I adjusted styles a bit additionally, and checked with different screen width as well.

It was a caching issue that can occur with the style loader when working in the src directory of WordPress-Develop.

we can do widgets dismissible, but I believe it needs another ticket and is out of scope for this one.

I think being able to dismiss the promotion of the mobile apps in the dashboard is very much in scope for this ticket. By failing to do so, WordPress contributors will just have to deal with the question why are there special rules for Automattic products?

For the display of the widget, I think there can be several improvements:

• only display the widget on mobile and tablet views. The calls to action are unactionable on desktop views
• only display the icon suitable for the users operating system. This will need to be a JavaScript sniff to account for caching/CDNs modifying the UA string.
• use an existing widget

My main concern for including this is that the iOS app remains very much a WordPress.com product.

1) The primary call to action on a fresh install of the app is to log in to a WordPress.com account.

2) For the 5million+ sites with Jetpack installed, the primary call to action is to use the Jetpack application. From memory, this is substantially larger than the old "stats" menu item.

3) It's really easy to click the Jetpack CTA and end up with a full screen advertisment for the Jetpack app.

4) WordPress.com tracking is enabled by default and there is no opt-out option displayed during the installation process. This just reenforces that the product primarily remains an Automattic product.

5) The terms of service links to WordPress.com, the Privacy Policy links to Automattic.

6) The logs show numerous references to Jetpack flows, WooCommerce promotions. The commit logs show promotions for WordPress.com Blaze were added last week.

As mentioned in an earlier comment, the decision has been made to keep these apps as Automattic products. I strongly object to them being promoted in the dashboard as long as that remains the case.

Without a proposal on make/core discussing the inclusion of Automattic products in the dashboard then I think it's premature to consider it.

[ibrahimmonir]

Test Report

Environment

• OS: Windows 11
• Browser: Firefox 114.0.2 (64-bit)
• Server: Apache/2.4.56
• PHP: 8.0.29
• WordPress: 6.3-alpha-55905
• Theme: twentytwentythree v1.1
• Active Plugins: gutenberg v16.0.0-rc.4

Steps to Test

1. Dashboard

Expected Results

• ✅ The patch working as well.

Supplemental Artifacts

Image - ​https://imgur.com/IbaBQBz

[tapassikdar]

Test Report

Environment

• OS: Windows 11
• Browser: Microsoft Edge Version 114.0.1823.51 (Official build) (64-bit)
• Server: Apache/2.4.56
• PHP: 8.0.29
• WordPress: 6.3-alpha-55905
• Theme: twentytwentythree v1.1
• Active Plugins: gutenberg v16.0.0-rc.4

Steps to Test

1. login to WordPress Dashboard & check the widget.

Expected Results

• ✅ The patch working perfectly.

Supplemental Artifacts

Image - ​https://prnt.sc/FeBP9RPgC6gE

[audrasjb]

I concur with @peterwilsoncc arguments: these apps are very tightly linked with Automattic and we should be very careful about including a call to action in favor of these products in an open source software.

Therefore, I'm moving it to Future Release. The next step for this ticket is probably to publish a Make/Core blogpost to see if the community is ok to ship this widget or not.

[oglekler]

@audrasjb and @peterwilsoncc,

Mobile team is finishing split of applications removing Jetpack/Automattic features from the community version (I hope they will provide update about what still needs to be done themselves), Documentation team is moving docs across and Support team took the applications on support already: ​https://make.wordpress.org/mobile/2023/04/11/contribute-to-the-future-of-the-wordpress-app/

To find out more about marketing part of this, please check the following issues: ​https://github.com/WordPress/Marketing-Team/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3A%22mobile+apps%22

[peterwilsoncc]

@oglekler I disagree with that statement, features for Jetpack and WordPress.com features are still being added:

• ​IOS-19592 added an overlay promoting Jetpack, merged in ​IOS-PR19902
• ​IOS-19235 added data sharing with the Jetpack app, merged in ​IOS-PR19236
• ​IOS-20093 to introduce an overlay for Blaze (the WP.com paid advertising feature), merged in ​IOS-PR20246

Further issues relating to Jetpack can be found on the ​Jetpack focus label on the iOS app. Issues and PRs for Jetpack continue to be created and merged on a regular basis.

While it is true some features relating to Jetpack are being removed, they appear to be getting replaced with advertisements and data sharing features for the Jetpack iOS app.

[hypest]

👋 friends!

I'm Stefanos from the mobile team, and I help lead the WordPress mobile and Jetpack mobile teams at Automattic. Happy to share thoughts and information that I hope can be helpful here.

features for Jetpack and WordPress.com features are still being added

I appreciate how it indeed looks that way, and will continue to look like that until the repositories, say, split up.

Mobile devs are mostly focused right now on helping existing users land on the app that serves their use-case best, by both implementing useful "redirects" and by making the distinction between the two apps more clear. It's a transition happening with the users' experience in mind, and while this process has progressed slower than anticipated, it's still moving forward. In fact, roughly a 5% of the users already experience an app with all the Jetpack features and forwards removed, as the team is testing if that flow is more successful and quicker than the current, "poster screens" based one.

I want to also note that, new work that gets added to the codebase is surfaced only to the relevant users. For example, Blaze is only available to WordPress.com users and there's no attempt to "advertise" it to non-WPCOM users. Similarly, the "Jetpack is detected on our site, try the Jetpack app" messaging is there for Jetpack-the-plugin users, to help them enjoy the best companion-app experience.

Goal is to help existing WP app users appreciate and understand the change, and land in the app that they think can best suit them. The transition is progressing and these "intermediate stage" screens will be gone down the road.

Let me know if I can help address more points or questions, happy to. 🙇‍♂️

[peterwilsoncc]

Replying to hypest:

Honestly, all this is really telling me is that the WordPress app is being treated as part of the marketing funnel to get people to use the Jetpack app:

• A/B testing to see what gets more people to switch to Jetpack
• the WordPress app is full of redirects to the Jetpack app

Having just reinstalled the app and logged in to my personal site, I have the following experience:

1. 1Password reports the login screen is wordpress.com (alerts it's unclear wordpress.com should have access to my peterwilson.cc password)
2. Full screen promotion to switch to Jetpack app
3. Select continue without Jetpack
4. Primary call to action: install the Jetpack app
5. Plugins screen fails, only works via wp.com

When logging in via WP.com (remains the primary call to action)

1. Additional screens for reader and notifications, promotes Jetpack app
2. Additional menu items on site pages:
   • stats: promotes jetpack app
   • activity log: promotes jetpack app
   • backup: promotes jetpack app
   • themes: promotes jetpack app
   • people: "jetpack powered"

I want to also note that, new work that gets added to the codebase is surfaced only to the relevant users. For example, Blaze is only available to WordPress.com users on the Jetpack app, and there's no attempt to "advertise" it to non-WPCOM users. Similarly, the "Jetpack is detected on our site, try the Jetpack app" messaging is there for Jetpack-the-plugin users, to help them enjoy the best companion-app experience.

These are still very Automattic centered promotions within the WordPress app. If a user chooses to use the WordPress app, Blaze should not be promoted to them in any circumstances if it's genuinely intended to be a product for WordPress.org users.

You've got multiple core committers who perceive this as too tied to Automattic, in it's current form, for it to be promoted in WP.org. I'm inclined to close this as maybelater until the following happens:

• primary call to action for wp.com removed
• Jetpack and WP application code bases split up
• all "useful" redirects to Jetpack removed
• all marketing material to "unlock your site's full potential" removed
• data sharing with the Jetpack app removed

[JeffPaul]

I concur with all that @peterwilsoncc has stated here and would want to see more clear actions that the Jetpack/DOTCOM features (and frankly that app itself) separated from the DOTORG mobile app. Until that's done, it seems WILDLY unfair to other hosting providers that Core would promote a mobile app that could act as a conversion funnel for DOTCOM.

[antonisme]

Hello friends,

I’m Antonis and I’m covering for @hypest till the end of September. Sorry for the late response on this and thank you for your feedback.

Honestly, all this is really telling me is that the WordPress app is being treated as part of the marketing funnel to get people to use the Jetpack app

I’m sorry that this appears this way. Our target is to remove all the Jetpack/Automattic features from the WordPress app while helping the users land on the app that best suits their needs. As @hypest mentioned above this transition process has progressed slower than anticipated and that’s why there are still redirects to the Jetpack app. Our plan is to remove those in the next few months.

You've got multiple core committers who perceive this as too tied to Automattic, in it's current form, for it to be promoted in WP.org. I'm inclined to close this as maybelater until the following happens:...

This is fair and all your points are what we aim for the WordPress App. We want to provide a clean WP.org experience without any reference/redirection or tie to the Jetpack app.
Splitting up the codebase is something that we are considering. The current shared codebase setup helps us to provide updates to the WordPress app with bug fixes, any new non-Jetpack/Automattic features and the latest Gutenberg mobile editor. As we get more involvement from the community and the features of the two apps get different, splitting up the codebases will be inevitable.