Mobile Web vs. Mobile App
Which makes sense for you and your product?
You’ve got a great solution or product to build. You realize there isn’t a WordPress plugin in the world that can save you. This is a truly custom need that requires a custom solution. You need an App!
Great! Where and how do you build it?
The second the word “App” comes to mind you think about the Google or Apple app stores. Entrepreneurs & organizations have clung to this warm fuzzy feeling they get when imagining their logo in the store. We want to say “Hey, go check us out in the store and download the app”. How neat is that?!
Cold Hard Truth
I love building mobile apps and leveraging device features, but these are often more expensive when you’re an up and coming startup. Just like most things in life, there are pros and cons to both. Today I shall do my best to highlight big takeaways for building your solution for the web or going straight to native mobile apps.
Disclaimer: I try to break web and mobile into the most general of circumstances. i.e I do not dive into the wonderful world of progressive web apps as theses are still too early to depend on across all devices (looking at you apple). These are super powered web apps that give us very native-ish features like an install icon from the home screen and push notifications.
Mobile Web Apps
Web apps are not websites
Web applications live in the browser. The average user might just see all browser based solutions as “websites”, but thats not the case at all.
A website is a content management system. Think Wix.com, Wordpress, Drupal, Squarespace, etc. Static content with the main purpose of providing information. These are what most of us have for our business .coms.
“Howdy, we are company X, this is what we do. These are our hours of operation. We’re changing the world via blah blah”
Web apps are created through custom development, much like a mobile app. These are systems with a higher level of interaction with the end-user. Think Facebook, DoorDash, Hudl. It’s true they all have mobile apps too … but lets say you had to pick one or the other for launch day.
Pros of The Web
- Greater Reach
- Less maintenance
- Less Expensive
Cons of The Web
- More buggy across browsers/devices
- High churn of web technology
The big sell for the web app is you can serve far more users than your mobile app can. We can get the maximum reach with a responsive web app. Our application will be accessible to desktops, phones, and tablets with UI that would render appropriately for each device.
This gives us the highest chance of getting our solution in our users hands. We get to invest our resources into building the product once opposed to multiple versions for iOS, Android, and Windows devices.
The downside here is we might be spending a lot of time hunting down bugs on different variations of devices and browsers. It might look and run great in Chrome and be super buggy in Firefox. Browsers all read our code a bit differently and we have to ensure we are creating an app that handles well in all the major ones (Safari, Chrome, Edge, Firefox …IE11).
Theres also a high churn of web technology right now and its important to build in something that has a strong community around it. We might hire a firm to build our web app and then 5 years later … nobody is working with technology A or B because the churn is so high.
The good news is everyone appears to be arriving to the same conclusions. Develop with web components! As long as you go with a technology that has a good organizational backing & component based, you should be good to. Everything else is heated seats for your toosh.
Popular JavaScript Frameworks for WebApps
Mobile Native Apps
Not much to say here. We’ve all become addicted to our mobile devices and the applications living on the home screen. Great examples of these would be Dominos, Tinder, WhatsApp, NetFlix, or any game. (Yes … we are all addicted to Dominos)
Pros of Mobile
- Higher level of user engagement
- Users spend more time in apps than browsers
- Device specific hardware/features (Touch ID, GPS, Gyroscope, Bluetooth, AR-Kit)
Cons of Mobile
- Higher cost
- Higher maintenance
The best thing about a mobile app is the deeper level of engagement they tend to have with end-users over browser based solutions. We can invite our users back into our app with push notifications or leverage device specific features like the touch ID, GPS, more. Users don’t need to remember a URL or bookmark anything. They can launch the solution from a nice little icon and we can set reminders to their notification center.
!!! please don’t make an mobile app just so a user can have a launch icon !!!
On the flip side, if we only target iOS we are leaving a whole group out of the party unless we build another app for Android. Do we build for windows phones too?
Its not hard to do the math. 3 apps versus 1. You will spend more $$$ developing native apps. Sure, we could make a hybrid app to save some dough, but we will still be spending time on specific platforms tweaking UI and APIs at some point.
Then theres the maintenance. Each time we get a new firmware release like iOS and Android, we need to update our applications regardless if we have new changes or not. If apple pushed out iOS 11 … we need a developer to update our mobile app to say it is compatible with the new operating system.
Its critical we have a strong partnership with whomever built our software or we have our own internal developers to push out the necessary updates.
The Bottom Line
The choice of building for the web or native mobile is not going to be the same for everyone.
Your solution might 100% depend on being a native mobile app. Think Uber. Maybe its a workout app that integrates with some piece of gear via bluetooth and charts your heart rate.
Nevertheless, leveraging the mobile web first and then moving into native apps tends to be a great strategy if your solution permits.
Often times an organization will provide their full solution in the web and offer limited features items in a native app. The goal is not to replicate every feature available in their web app, but offer critical features that would make sense in an on-the-go format. Think YouTube, Facebook, or SoundCloud.
Here’s what I would do if I was creating my product today:
Phase I — Build a minimal viable product (MVP) in a responsive web app
- Keeps my cost down while delivering to the widest net possible
- Gets my business off the ground, proves my idea, and starts earning early revenue
Phase II — Build out native apps to supplement the solution
- I’ve demonstrated my solution floats and can reinvest any profits back into native apps.
- My native apps will be a condensed version of my product giving users access to core pieces while leveraging device features that make sense on-the-go.
