Advantages of a standalone app

*in the following, the term "university" is used as a collective term for all educational institutions in the tertiary education sector (including universities, administrative and business academies, universities of applied sciences)

As part of a university cooperation with UniNow, you have many options to customize the app to your institution: from the selection of functions and modules, to the color design and the development of special features.

Ultimately, however, students will find their university via the university selection in the UniNow app.

So all these aspects of customization pay off only after you download the app. Therefore UniNow offers you the possibility to publish a standalone campus app for your university.

A standalone app can be completely designed and customized according to your requirements and wishes. In addition to the usual variants of individualization, you decide on the name of the app, as well as the pictorial design and receive your individual icon.

Next to the flexibility and freedom of decision, an own campus app offers further advantages.

→ Your own entry in the App or Google Play Store

The focus of attention here is on your university and no longer on UniNow as a service provider. When people search for your university or city, your app can be found more easily as a result.

Students thus have the opportunity to find your app on their own without the educational institution doing much advertising in advance.

→ Own app logo

The app can be branded with the university's own logo, giving it greater recognition value in the app store or in marketing activities. Students, who normally identify with their university, become aware of the app more quickly and feel a stronger sense of belonging. They are also more likely to respond to logos if they have many points of contact with them.

→ No alternative university selection

When students download the UniNow app, the first thing they do is select their own university from a list of all universities. Thus, the focus at that moment is not exclusively on your university. In addition, the impression could be created that setting up the app does not involve any effort and that the university does not offer students any additional benefits here.

The step of selecting a university is omitted, with a standalone app that is only designed for your university.

→ Higher marketing effect

Due to being faster located, the branding* via their own logo and the lack of alternative universities, there is a higher overall marketing effect for their own university. Students' attention is thus on your institution throughout the customer journey.

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*Degression - Branding

In concrete terms, branding means building a brand. At its core, it all revolves around the goal of having customers associate something special with your brand. This can be a good feeling, a great experience, an inspiring service or even a pleasant sound or smell. The main thing is that it triggers a satisfied feeling in the customer and elevates your product or service to an emotional level.

All communication is designed to see customers as people and treat them as such.

Building a brand takes many small, perfectly coordinated steps and decisions. Since this blog post is not intended to be about developing a brand, further elaboration on this will be omitted.
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→ Ad-free

As part of a standalone app, you automatically get advertising freedom. Only information and events of the university channels (also AStA/Stura, institutions and student bodies) are displayed in your news feed and no advertising from companies.

→ No maintenance effort

UniNow takes care of the complete setup of the app, as well as the technical design. You also don't have to worry about technical problems, app updates or maintenance. UniNow GmbH is very happy to take on these responsibilities - thanks to a large pool of partners and experience.

It can be summarized that a standalone app offers some advantages for university marketing and has positive effects on branding. If you want to get the most out of your campus app promotion efforts, then you should look into a standalone variant for your university.

The technical effort is hardly greater than for implementing the UniNow app, as this alternative is also designed according to your wishes (color design, functions, additional modules). In both cases, the complete setup and maintenance over the entire service period lies with UniNow.

If you have any questions about the UniNow app or the standalone variant, or if you would like more information about the individual app functions, please feel free to contact my colleague Stefan Wegener.