You Can Now Download The Official Car Throttle Android App

At the beginning of the year we laid out some Car Throttle company goals that would dictate how we would evolve and continue to ‘level up’ in 2015. One of the more important goals was to release a native app, and today, I’m extremely proud to announce that the official Car Throttle Android app is now live! You can download it here from Google’s Play Store.

Why a Car Throttle app is so damn important

Let’s take a step back to reflect on the changes we’ve witnessed in this industry. We started the year as a social publisher, with a core mission of distributing our stories on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. But we very quickly realised that if we wanted to have a true dynamic independent environment, a proper community for auto enthusiasts, we’d need to encourage and improve the amount of user-generated content we could support.

Those of you who were with us in 2014 will have already noticed our first shift towards UGC with the launch of ‘Discuss’. This test was successful and proved that we could slowly start to reduce our reliance on social traffic in favour of building a brand we could better control. This led to the launch of our own platform on 2 March and a complicated backend rewrite by George and JJ.

To compound the issue further, we realised that more than 70 per cent of our web traffic was coming from mobile browsers and only 30 per cent from desktop users. 53 per cent of this mobile traffic was from Android devices and 45 per cent from iOS devices. Given our changing consumption habits (like, who even uses a laptop anymore?!) and the constant feedback we got from you CTzens (cough #CTApp cough), we jumped straight into app development, having successfully brought Android dev Remy into the team, with the app designed by our Pixelpusher-in-Chief Chillyjames.

Tell me more about the app!

First, it’s important to point out that the app has been designed and developed according to official Material Design guidelines. We thought it would be lazy to simply port a version of our mobile site, so instead, we redesigned the platform fit for any Android user wanting a native Android experience. The end result is a stunning feed view and easy-to-use content creation tools.

By far and away though, the most important feature of this app is an obvious one; accessibility. You can now fire up the app with one tap on your home screen and via clever push notifications. We know this will bring you back to the app more often, while showing you new stories, new trends and interactions on your posts.

There’s also a new ‘Discover’ page which shows trending hashtags, popular communities and trending posts by realtime traffic. So you’ll always know what’s going on in the car world, as it happens.

Ahem, what about search?

Exciting news: search is finally here! You can search for posts, communities and users on the ‘Discover’ page and if you’re a new user, you can follow your friends as well as popular petrolhead figures like Shmee150, Evo Magazine and our own Alex Kersten (don’t tell him I said he was popular).

I’m an iOS user. Is it finally time to trade in my iPhone 4?

Maybe it is time for that Christmas upgrade. But fear not hardcore Apple fanboys, our new iOS developer Joan is already making great progress with the official iOS CT App and we’re expecting to launch it early in 2016. Before I get flooded with questions, I unfortunately can’t give you an official release date.

Want to help us? Review and spread the word!

We’re running various competitions over the next few days; on the CT app, on Instagram and with our influencer partners. But we also need your reviews if we’re going to become one of the most popular apps of the season. So please do head over to the Play Store and tell the world why they need this app in their lives!

What’s next?

For the next few weeks we’ll be closely monitoring app usage, analytics and reports from CTzens – if there are any critical bugs, please email support. After that, we’ll start to add features to the app we weren’t able to ship in V1. These include the ability to add images to comments and the ability to add Garage cars to your profile. After that, well, we’ll be pushing ahead with our mission to build the best car community in the world.

I want to sign off by thanking my team for the amazing progress we’ve made this year and I hope you’ll join me in showing your appreciation for their hard work. I also want to thank you, loyal CTzens, for sticking with us as we’ve made changes, for helping us to become a global brand. There’s nothing more rewarding than knowing we’re helping people realise their passion for cars and helping them to find likeminded family who share the same interest.

Happy Holidays, and here’s to an unforgettable 2016.