Guide on App Configuration and Content Management

Disclaimer: This is not a fully comprehensive list of all settings that an administrator may consider during the configuration of the app, but highlights the main ones.

The Loialcard App offers a multitude of opportunities and ways of configuring your app to make it your own, truly reflecting your brand and delivering on the expectations of your loyal customers and members.

With this said there are a number of design and configuration decisions for you as an administrator to consider before launching your app regardless of what industry vertical you are in. Then again, the app is an evolving endeavour and with the constant updates and improvements from Loialcard that make your app feel new and fresh in the hands of your users, there is always room for changing your app settings and adjusting as you go along.

This article lists a few design decisions you, regardless of your industry vertical, will face during app configuration linking deeper to other help articles on how to manage these settings in detail.

Read if you consider having more than one language in the application

Will you serve users one or more language versions of your app? Language versions are treated more or less independently from each other in the app, e.g. you could have a menu in one language with many menu items and in the other language versions only have limited information.

Most administrators start with one main language and then look into potentially adding another language later on, since even though it is easy to add in the administration tool it of course requires extra work in creating specific content for the extra language which is time consuming.

Read to understand how navigation in the application is setup and how it can be segmented based on the Card Themes

The navigation section includes two separate sections listing navigational items. Keep in mind that these items can easily be changed over time and preferably altered as some might be more relevant during certain periods of the year.

To be considered is if the menu items should:

Read if you want to adjust the design of the application to better match your brand

Loialcard provides configuration of the app to better match your brand. Mainly there are two types of settings in the Branding section of the administration panel:

Read this if you want to let users register and login to the application with their Google or Apple account?

By ticking this option you enable the social login options in the application in parallel with the traditional email / password option making it quicker and easier for users to get started. If there is a match between the email address of the user's social account and any email account they might have already created in your application, these users are merged automatically.

For golf clubs using the app, rather than using Social Login, Golf-ID login is a smarter approach since it not only makes login easy for a golf player, but also the system then brings in some specific data from GiT to use in the segmentation of notification send outs such as handicap of the golf player.

Read if you want to manually approve every user before they are let into the application

It is possible to set up a manual approval process of new members before they are let into the app. In such a case selected administrators are presented with an alert every time a potential member completes the onboarding process.

For golf clubs using the app, this is a somewhat unnecessary process since the Golf-ID login integration including the automatic assignment of theme cards in the app identifies members as guests or members without any manual involvement. This of course requires that the app has a guest theme card set up with potentially matching menu items and menu shortcuts. If guests are not allowed to access the app regardless, only actual members, then the manual approval process needs to be activated. Such a manual process will work smoothly with the auto assignment of the correct membership card, and this match happens automatically once the members has been manually approved.

Read if you link externally to web addresses and want to keep the application’s header navigation rather than the navigation of the user’s web browser.

List the base or complete web addresses of external links that you want to be presented more in line with the look and feel of the application rather than opening the web browser of the user’s phone. Review the more detailed information on embeds in this article.

Read if you want to change standard phrases in the application

There are a number of standard features in the app, such as Map, Event listing etc. These features have for example page titles, such as Map for the map functionality in the app. These titles and text strings can be adjusted from the administration tool if so desired. An administrator can for example change the title of the button on the start page presented to the user once they have downloaded the app.

Read if you use forms or have manual approval activated

For some features in the application there is the possibility to set up email alerts sent to administrators. This is only required if the app uses any of the features “Manual Approval New Members” or the content type “Forms”. Alerts are not necessary even when using these features, but a handy help sending an alert that there is something to either act on or look at in the administration tool.

Read if you want to assign card themes / membership cards to your users to present them with benefits or segment notifications and even menu items

Card Themes can be set up for the app to be able to assign membership cards to the users. There always has to be at least one card theme, but if the app will not use membership cards you can simply in the app refrain from linking to the membership card.

Assigning users membership cards lets you:

Read if you want to have manually created fixed groups of users that you want to send notifications to

Members can be sorted manually into groups and these groups are then listed in the segmentation of what users to send a notification to.

Read if you want to store specific data points about your users to be able to segment notifications more detailed

Dynamic Data lets you set up your own form fields, such as dropdowns and checkboxes, to be displayed in the onboarding and profile of the user, e.g. a checkbox asking if they want to receive certain types of notifications. You can also set up fields that only you as an administrator can edit. The data stored in these fields can be used for segmentation of what users receive what notifications.

Read if you want to ask users what notifications they are mainly interested in

With Dynamic Data checkboxes can be set up to ask users if they want to opt-out from certain notification categories. Preferably these opt-outs are then only made visible in the Profile page (not the Onboarding) and the checkboxes are by default ticked. The categories / checkbox labels could for example be; Golf notifications, Restaurant information, General information.

Read if you want to understand how news can be distributed to your users

In the administration panel there is no content type named News, but there are a few options to distribute news items to your users:

Read if you want to present geographic locations in a list or on a map in the application

Locations with GPS coordinates and additional descriptive information can be added to the application. Consider if you want to present locations just as pins on a map or with additional information such as a short popup message including phone number details and / or with a separate page per location with images, text and links leading to further information.

Read if you want to present date and time based events to be viewed in a list and / or linked to from other parts of the app

The function lets you add events presented in a chronological order in the application. Events can be linked to Locations and can have other links leading to internal pages or external web addresses.

Read if you want to present information in a less defined format than Locations and Events and / or if you want to build linked hierarchies

Pages can contain a header image, text, images, videos and internal and / or external links making it possible to build a menu hierarchy having links and sub links, e.g. a list of recipes presented in a page leading to detailed pages per recipe.

Read if you want to ask your users about something they can answer in a from

Forms can be used to collect feedback, get soft bookings or collect orders, e.g. if you want to send out a push about a limited edition of your product and have users pre-order.

Read if you at launch want to set up a simple sort of competition for app users to take part in

A great way of driving app downloads upon launch of the application is to set up a Form and offer a prize to a user or number of users based on their answers. This can also drive reviews and if asked correctly in the form page, these can be used in marketing.

Read this if you want to present more editorial and graphical content in certain pages of your app

The content types Locations, Events and Pages all include the option to add items that link to more information using the Add Item functionality. Included in this is the option to present also auto play videos and image galleries as part of the page and with links leading further either internally or externally, used e.g. to through a Page graphically present a new flow of what happens at your golf course and the competitions you arrange.

Read this if you want to include emojis or animated gifs in your application

In notification texts and other parts of the administration panel of the application it is possible to add emojis and in image fields animated gifs can be used. Emojis are not possible to use in fields using the HTML-editor (the larger content field with the possibilities to format the text and insert images).

Here are a few sources of such assets.