How to Make a Website Into an App Your Customers Will Love

So, you're thinking about turning your website into an app? The good news is, you've got options. You can take the fast route and repackage it in a WebView wrapper, go for a modern web-native feel with a Progressive Web App (PWA), or go all-in by redeveloping it with native or hybrid frameworks.

Each path strikes a different balance between performance, cost, and what your customers will actually experience. Let's break down which one makes the most sense for your product and your team.

Why Bother Turning Your Website Into an App?

You might already have a slick, mobile-responsive website. It gets traffic, your users can buy things or sign up, and it’s a solid part of your business. So why even consider building an app? It’s not about replacing your website. It’s about creating a powerful, high-performance channel for your most loyal users.

Think of it this way: a browser tab is temporary and easily closed, but an app icon lives right on your user's home screen. It's a direct, persistent link to your brand. That constant presence encourages loyalty and far more frequent engagement. For a founder or product manager, that’s a direct line to your best customers.

The Performance Gap Between Web and Mobile

The main reason to build an app is all about performance—and I don't just mean speed. I'm talking about business performance. A great mobile site is crucial for getting discovered, but an app is built from the ground up for retention and conversion.

The numbers don't lie. Mobile apps typically convert 2–4× higher than mobile websites. On top of that, orders placed through apps are often 10–30% larger than those from the mobile web. This isn't magic; it's because apps have structural advantages that websites just can't compete with.

Because an app can store data locally on a device, it loads faster and feels much smoother. Your users aren't starting from a blank slate every time they visit. Their preferences, history, and cart are right there, which removes friction and makes it easier for them to take action.

Creating a Stickier User Experience

Beyond just sales, apps are masters at building long-term user engagement. They have tools designed specifically to keep people coming back.

• Push Notifications: This is the app's secret weapon. A Shopify store owner can use them to announce a flash sale. A SaaS company can alert a user that their report is ready. It's a direct, personal way to re-engage users right on their lock screen.
• Offline Access: For a content app like AllTrails or a productivity tool like Notion, the ability to work without an internet connection is a game-changer. It lets users engage with your product on a subway, on a plane, or anywhere else.
• Device Integration: Apps can tap into native hardware like the camera, GPS, and contact lists. An e-commerce app can let users virtually "try on" products with their camera. A local services app can use GPS to find nearby providers. This opens the door to much richer experiences.

If your current site isn't hitting your goals, it's possible that an outdated website is costing you customers. An app can be a fantastic way to leapfrog those limitations. You can also dive deeper by reading our guide on making mobile websites more effective.

A helpful way to think about it: Your website is for reaching everyone, but your app is for engaging your best customers. It’s a dedicated space that offers a faster, more personal, and more convenient experience than the web can provide.

Picking the Right Path to Turn Your Website Into an App

So, you've decided to make a website into an app. That's a huge step, but now you're facing a whole new set of questions. The technology you pick isn't just a technical detail for developers—it directly shapes your app's performance, how much it'll cost to build, and what it will take to maintain it down the road. For founders, product managers, and designers, getting this right from the start is absolutely critical.

You're essentially looking at four main routes: Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), WebView wrappers, Hybrid frameworks, and a full Native build. Each one presents a different balance of user experience versus the resources you need to invest. There’s no single "best" choice here, only the one that makes the most sense for your business goals, your budget, and the skills your team already has.

This decision tree gives you a great visual for how different business objectives, like boosting user engagement or increasing average order values, can steer you toward the most effective app strategy.

The real takeaway here is that your "why" should always drive your "how." Let the outcomes you want to achieve guide your technical approach.

Your Four Main Options Explained

Let's unpack what each of these paths actually looks like in practice.

• Progressive Web Apps (PWAs): Think of these as supercharged websites that behave like apps. Users can "install" them to their home screen, and you can send push notifications and even offer some offline functionality. Real-world example: Pinterest Lite is a PWA that gives users in low-bandwidth regions a fast, app-like experience without a huge download. The best part? You don't have to deal with app stores. The downside is they can't tap into all the native device features a true app can.

• WebView Wrappers: This is, by far, the fastest way to get your website listed on the App Store and Google Play. A WebView is just a simple native container that loads your mobile website. It’s quick and cheap, but the experience often feels sluggish and out of place on a phone. It's just... a website in a box. Real-world example: Many simple banking apps or internal company tools start as WebViews to get to market quickly.

Before you go down any path, it's worth making sure your existing site is up to snuff. Brushing up on modern website design essentials can ensure your foundation is solid enough for the transition.

• Hybrid Frameworks (like React Native): Here’s where you get a powerful middle ground. You build a single app using familiar web technologies (like JavaScript and React), and it compiles into a genuine native app for both iOS and Android. Real-world example: The Shopify and Coinbase apps are built with React Native. This delivers a user experience that is leaps and bounds ahead of a WebView, and it’s way more cost-effective than building two separate native apps from scratch.

• Full Native (Swift/Kotlin): This is the top-tier, gold-standard approach. You're building two entirely separate apps: one for iOS using Apple's language, Swift, and another for Android using Google's language, Kotlin. Real-world example: Apps like Airbnb and Duolingo are built natively for unbeatable performance and the deepest possible integration with device hardware, but it's also the most expensive and time-consuming route.

A word of caution: The most common mistake I see is teams choosing a path based only on the initial price tag or how fast they can launch. A cheap WebView app that users delete after five minutes because it’s clunky is a far more expensive failure than a well-built hybrid app that actually keeps them coming back.

Comparing Website-to-App Conversion Methods

To help you see the trade-offs more clearly, here's a side-by-side look at the four main approaches to turning a website into an app, evaluating them on key business and technical criteria.

This table lays out the core give-and-take. If you want to go even deeper, our guide comparing Native vs. Hybrid app development breaks down the nuances even further.

Ultimately, the right decision comes down to your specific needs. Are you just trying to validate an idea as quickly as possible, or are you building a flagship product where every millisecond of performance counts? Your answer to that question will point you in the right direction.

Your Actionable App Conversion Workflow

Okay, you've picked your technical path. Now for the fun part: turning that decision into an actual plan. This isn't a rigid, step-by-step manual, but a practical framework I've seen work for all kinds of product teams—from solo founders to established companies. It's your roadmap for getting from a web address to an app icon on your user's home screen.

The very first move, before you write a single line of code, is to take a hard look at your existing website. Spoiler: not every part of your site belongs in an app. The real goal here is to pinpoint the core, high-value user flows that will genuinely shine in a native or near-native environment.

Assess and Identify App-Ready Components

Start by digging into your website analytics and user behavior data. You’re on a treasure hunt for the most loved and used parts of your site.

• Which journeys drive the most conversions? For an e-commerce site, the product discovery feed and multi-step checkout are perfect candidates for your app's main event.
• What are the most common tasks? If people are constantly logging into your SaaS dashboard to check project statuses, that feature needs to be front and center in your app. Easy access is key.
• Where do users spend the most time? That popular "build your own" product customizer or a surprisingly engaging blog could become a cornerstone of your app's content strategy.

This audit isn’t about just copying everything over. It's about curation. An app cluttered with every single page from your website will feel bloated and confusing. The best apps do a few things exceptionally well.

Practical tip: Your app should be an elevated, distilled version of your website's best features, not a carbon copy. A user’s expectation is for a faster, more focused experience. Anything less will feel like a step backward.

Scaffold the App and Implement Mobile Navigation

Once you know which features made the cut, it's time to build the basic skeleton of your app. This means setting up the main screens and—most importantly—designing navigation that feels intuitive on a phone. Web navigation patterns, like those complex, multi-level dropdown menus, are a disaster on small screens.

Instead, you need to think in mobile-first patterns:

• Tab Bar: This is your go-to for 3-5 top-level destinations. Think Home, Search, Profile. It’s the gold standard for a reason.
• Hamburger Menu: Perfect for tucking away secondary items that don't need to be visible all the time, like Settings, About Us, or a Help section.
• Stack Navigation: The only choice for multi-step flows where users move forward and backward, like a signup form or checkout process.

This is also where you start swapping web elements for native UI. Instead of standard web forms and buttons, you'll use native components that give users the look, feel, and tactile feedback (like haptics) they expect from a high-quality app. For teams building with React Native, this translation from web design to native code can be a major bottleneck, but it’s also where you can get huge wins in efficiency. In fact, our guide on turning design into code dives much deeper into solving this exact problem.

Speeding Up Your Build With Modern Tools

If you've ever tried to make a website into an app, you know the old-school way is a grind. Developers spend hours, sometimes days, meticulously recreating web components in React Native, wrestling with CSS to make it mobile-friendly, and building navigation from the ground up. It’s slow, tedious work that creates a ton of friction between design and development teams.

But what if you could skip the most painful parts? A new wave of tooling is here, and it's completely changing how we approach this. AI-powered platforms can now take your existing web UI and generate functional, production-ready code in a matter of minutes. This isn't just about saving time; it's about fundamentally rethinking the path from a web concept to a live mobile app.

Closing the Gap Between Design and Code

This is a game-changer for teams going the full React Native route. Instead of developers staring at a Figma file and trying to translate it pixel-by-pixel, these tools empower designers and product managers to generate high-fidelity prototypes that spit out real, usable code.

This completely flips the traditional handoff on its head. It’s no longer a one-way street where designs get tossed "over the wall" to the engineering team. Now, it’s a collaborative cycle. The initial prototype creates a solid code foundation that developers can grab and immediately start building on.

Why this matters to a PM or Founder: The real win here isn't just speed—it's alignment. When designers and PMs can generate code that developers actually want to use, you kill the endless back-and-forth. The whole team can focus on polishing the user experience instead of just rebuilding the basics.

How This Looks in the Real World

Let's get practical. Imagine you need to turn your e-commerce site's product detail page into a native app screen. The old way could easily burn a couple of days. A designer makes a mobile mockup, then a developer painstakingly translates that into React Native components, styles them, and hooks up the logic.

With a tool like RapidNative, you can get this done in the time it takes to grab a coffee. You can literally take a screenshot of your webpage, upload it, and let the AI generate a fully structured React Native screen.

Here’s a look at the platform in action. On the left, a simple image input. On the right, an instant transformation into a live, interactive app preview with its corresponding code.

The crucial detail is that this isn't just a static image or a locked-down prototype. What you get is clean, modular React Native code built on a modern stack like Expo and NativeWind. Your dev team can export it and drop it straight into their project.

This gives your team a massive head start. It handles all the initial UI grunt work, freeing up your developers to focus on what really matters: implementing business logic, integrating native features, and shipping a great product.

You’ve built the app. That’s a massive accomplishment, but honestly, it’s just the starting line. The real race begins when you need people to actually find and download it. This is where App Store Optimization (ASO) comes in—think of it as SEO, but for the Apple App Store and Google Play. Your job is to signal to the algorithms, and more importantly, to real people, that your app is the one they’re looking for.

Nailing your ASO is critical because the app stores are incredibly crowded. The good news? If you can get someone to your app's page, the conversion rates are surprisingly high. The US App Store converts at 25%, while Google Play is even better at 27.3%. But here's the catch: the overall install rate from a user's first impression to actually downloading is a tiny 3.6–3.8%. This tells you everything you need to know—the hardest part is just getting people to your page in the first place. You can find more app store conversion rate insights from Adapty.

Crafting Your App Store Presence

Your app's listing is its digital storefront. Every single element, from the title to the last screenshot, has to work in harmony to tell a compelling story and convince users to tap that download button.

• App Title and Subtitle: The title should obviously feature your brand, but try to include a primary keyword if it feels natural. Don't force it. The subtitle is your secret weapon—a short, powerful phrase packed with descriptive keywords that instantly explains what your app does.
• Keywords: Both stores provide a dedicated keyword field. Get inside your user's head. What words would they type into the search bar to solve the problem your app addresses? Use keyword research tools to find terms with decent search volume that your competitors might have overlooked.
• Description: The first few sentences are everything because they're what users see before they have to tap "more." Hook them immediately by highlighting the single biggest benefit. For the rest of the description, break down features and use cases into clean, easy-to-scan bullet points or short paragraphs.

Pro tip: Treat your app listing like a high-stakes landing page. You have literally seconds to capture attention and communicate value. A boring title or a set of confusing screenshots will torpedo your conversion rate before a potential user even thinks about downloading.

Visuals and Social Proof Are Your Best Salespeople

Let's be real—people judge a book by its cover, and they definitely judge an app by its icon and screenshots. These visual elements are often the first impression you make.

Your app icon has to be clean, memorable, and recognizable even when it's tiny. For screenshots, don't just throw up a random collection of screens. Craft a visual narrative. Walk the user through the app's best features, and use text overlays to call out what makes each screen special.

Finally, nothing sells an app better than other happy users. Gently encourage your most satisfied customers to leave ratings and reviews. Those little stars have a huge impact on your app's rank and serve as a powerful signal of quality to new visitors. Make sure to respond to reviews, both positive and negative. It shows you’re listening and that you care about your community—and that social proof is often the final nudge someone needs to hit "Install."

Common Questions About Turning a Website Into an App

When you first start thinking about making a website into an app, a ton of questions probably come to mind. It can feel like a complex journey, but once you get a handle on the key trade-offs, you'll be able to move forward with confidence.

Let's tackle the big questions we hear all the time from founders, product managers, and developers.

How Much Does It Cost to Turn a Website Into an App?

This is always the first question, and the honest answer is: it really depends on the path you take.

If you go for a simple WebView wrapper, you’re basically just putting your existing website into a mobile shell. This can be done for as little as a few thousand dollars. At the complete opposite end of the spectrum, a full custom native build for both iOS and Android can easily blow past $100,000, and the sky's the limit depending on complexity.

For most businesses, the sweet spot lies somewhere in the middle with a hybrid approach using a framework like React Native. You get a user experience that feels nearly native, but for a fraction of the cost. A solid first version typically lands in the $25,000 to $75,000 range.

How Long Will the Conversion Take?

Just like cost, the timeline is all over the map. A WebView app? You could have that ready for the app stores in just a couple of weeks.

But if you decide to build two separate, from-scratch native apps, you're signing up for a major project. It's not uncommon for that to take 6-12 months, or even longer, before you have a polished V1 to show your users.

This is where a hybrid React Native build really shines. Teams can often get a functional MVP out the door in 3-5 months. That faster time-to-market is a huge reason why everyone from lean startups to big corporations lean this way.

An important reality check: The biggest factor in your timeline isn't just the code—it's decision-making. Having a crystal-clear vision for the app's core features and a decisive product owner can literally shave months off the schedule. Indecision is the single greatest cause of project delays I've ever seen.

What About Ongoing Maintenance and Updates?

Launching an app is the starting line, not the finish line. Once you make a website into an app, you have to keep it running smoothly. This isn't just a suggestion; it's a necessity.

Here's what that looks like in practice:

• OS Updates: Apple and Google roll out major operating system updates every year. You'll need to update your app to make sure it doesn't break.
• Security Patches: You are on the hook for keeping all your third-party libraries and dependencies current to protect your users from vulnerabilities.
• Feature Enhancements: Your app can't stay static. It has to evolve with user feedback and your own shifting business goals.

A good rule of thumb is to budget about 15-20% of your initial development cost for annual maintenance. This gives you the runway to keep the app secure, working correctly, and valuable to your users.

Ready to skip the slow, manual grind of rebuilding your web UI for mobile? RapidNative can turn your prompts, images, or designs into production-ready React Native screens in minutes. It's a massive shortcut on your path from website to app. Get started for free at RapidNative.