Apps Publishers Want

We at the Glam Platform team see our role as matchmakers. We're matchmaking developers, publishers, and brand advertisers to create cool functionality for end users. We hope this information is useful to you and helps you to create kick-ass applications.

The Glam Platform Team has conducated three roundtables with our publishers in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York and surveyed the entire Glam Network of 640+ publishers to find out what kinds of apps our publishers want. Here's what we learned.

At a High Level

Glam sites want tools for:

• Delivering their own content and users’ content
• Engaging users
• Distributing content and publishing additional content to complement and extend their point of view

Publishers' Preferences

Apps should be:

• Easy to use
• Seamless with their sites
• Clean look and feel
• Mindful of page load time

Branding

Bloggers and other web publishers want their users to perceive applications and tools they embed on their sites in a seamless way, as if the applications are coming from them.

Functionality is king, but brand is also very important. Most publishers prefer:

• Subtle developer logo or a link to a developer's site
• Clean look and feel that they can customize, even with the ability to upload their own logo in addition to the developer's.

Publishers' Wish Lists

It's surprisingly difficult for publishers to find good tools. The possibilities for successful Glam Apps are endless, because many publishers don't know they want something until they see it.

To get you started, here are some examples of requests we have heard from publishers:

• Photo galleries*
• Slideshows that allows users to rate images and leave comments*
• Slideshows drawing on a pool of photos that a publisher can curate*
• Ecommerce widgets for products, especially widgets that are contextual for blog posts*
• Publisher-branded video players that allows them to upload content*
• A widget that allows users to contribute content (photos, text, video) and for editors to curate*
• Polls*
• Tools for users to send content to mobile
• Easy ways to share content or a whole site with friends
• Newsletter tools, especially tools for list-building
• Shopping lists for users
• Wishlists for users
• Quizzes
• Plug-and-play contests
• Games
• Ratings
• Surveys
• Calendars
• Tools for hosting events
• Daily favorites (e.g., favorite store or product of the day)
• Analytics

* Most mentioned requests.