Why Native Apps Trump Hybrid — An Analysis
It’s time to put an end to the debate.
Making an app brings together your existing offline or web customer experiences to mobile. A great example of this would be with retail companies. The same user base who browses the web can now have access to another method of shopping.
However, when it comes to bringing your vision, hard work, and carefully planned wireframes to life, one question comes to mind: should you build a hybrid or a native app?
As a company who takes great pride in the unique range of app related services such as A/B testing software and analytics, we have seen our fair share of apps across all verticals within the industry and are here to provide our take on this question.
Ask Yourself First
Making the native vs hybrid decision really comes down to three questions:
- How much are you willing to invest in the app?
- Is user experience and engagement important to you?
- How much time do you have until product release?
Why Everyone is Going Native
If you have a deadline that is in the distant future, care about giving your users a seamless in-app experience, and are willing to forgo higher initial costs, then going the native route is for you.
Building native apps requires you to maintain two different code bases, one being iOS and the other Android. This means, your organization will require mobile engineers who have a strong knowledge of one of the coding languages or both in order to maintain and upkeep the code bases. With tools like Taplytics, the entire team (non-technical and technical) can all work together on the native app. Having specialized resources as well as the input of the whole mobile team brings with it the high quality user experience once the app is rolled out across both platforms.
The increase in performance can be attributed to the fact that the app is built specifically for the mobile operating system. This means that it will have easier access to already existing built-in functions and the latest and greatest features within the phone such as camera, GPS, SMS, and address book. An added perk of building native is that App Stores tend to feature apps that are native.
Native apps also offer the most security and offline support within the app. Developing the app within the operating system makes for a seamless user experience where the visuals are built for the app and not just for a mobile web view.
An Incremental Approach: Hybrid Apps
If you are running on a tight deadline, want to keep costs low, and simply want an app to work, then going hybrid is for you.
Hybrid apps are known for being cheaper than native apps and get pushed out to market faster. Unlike with native apps, you can build hybrid in one source code that eventually gets pushed across all platforms. This means you require less resources compared to native, which can be ideal for smaller companies.
The downsides to hybrid apps, however, outweigh that of native’s. Performance is the dimension where hybrid apps lack the most. These apps are predominantly built using HTML5 and Javascript, both being website coding languages. This in itself means that content is loaded to the page as the user navigates through, making for a less than seamless user experience. The less than optimal UX can also be attributed to problems with hybrid’s ability to handle the number of server requests and load balance requests.
Our own experiences have shown that the complexities with A/B testing hybrid apps are much greater than native. With a less than optimal user experience and the inability to effectively A/B test, the short term low cost of building hybrid apps impacts the long term success and profitability of the app.
The Verdict
In the long run, native apps will give you the least amount of headache.
The high initial cost is justified by the seamless user experience that native has to offer. Your app will also be more secure and reliable as users enjoy the app you have created.
Hybrid apps, although less than ideal, are suitable for if you want to quickly test your app in a small market. By doing that you can gauge user activity of your app’s concept and tweak things as needed before you release the app out to a larger market by leveraging the easy-to-update aspect of hybrid apps.
Both apps have their advantages and disadvantages but benefits can be reaped from either platform given you have checked the resources you are working with and the end goal you have in mind. If you want reliability, strong performance, and the ability to leverage mobile tools (eg. A/B testing) in the long run, native is the way to go.
