Stephen Abela

Whilst we love flaunting our phone and making the best use of the increasingly substantial investment, at times we cannot help not feeling slightly overwhelmed with the large amounts of apps that we are installing. This is understandably a very common feeling amongst the users, including our potential customers which may lead us to rethink our position in relation to apps. We may have taken for granted that building an app is crucial. However, it may be time to question whether an app or a mobile-friendly website is the way forward.

Let’s start off with the definitions.

Apps are mobile applications that may be downloaded and installed onto your phone. There is a myriad of functionalities that an app may feature within it, some of which are more crucial to the user experience, such as browsing whilst being offline. Apps tend to run faster, yet they may drain your mobile battery which is a current-day problem.

A mobile-friendly website is your standard website with the added benefit of facilitating access and browsing via mobile.

Can you imagine having a fully fledged website all crammed up within a mobile screen? That would be super hard to browse and navigate through the different pages. A mobile-friendly website would simply translate the entire website in a mobile-friendly view ensuring the same level of user experience with a somewhat different form and version of the same content.

Which option should I go for?

Typical to technological questions, answer may be way more complex than a simple yes or no as both options offer a number of advantages.

Advantages of Mobile Apps

1. Better overall user experience An app can provide the user with the capability to select a number of options and preferences which ultimately will create a better connection between the user and the business. A more personalised message is a more successful one and will ultimately increase the customer engagement. Apps may integrate to other apps and features within the mobile, thus making them more useful for the day-to-day stuff and further increasing the different ways through which a client is engaged.

2. Experimenting Whilst research is crucial to the business, yet some questions would still be left unanswered. Through apps the business can experiment with some features and different business models for a more contained and limited customer group. This would be providing the business with real-life insights of the effects that the said changes will bring to the business, whilst maintaining the current business models in place.

3. Increased capabilities

A mobile app will offer the IT mind behind it, a larger range of features such as:

• Push notifications

• Easy call functionality

• Myriad of alerts

• Camera access

• Automatic updates.

Whilst the above may not be that crucial from a business owner point of view, however it presents very important advantages for the user, differentiating the user experience from the standard brick-to-mortar one whilst enhancing the online experience.

Advantages of mobile websites

1. Instantly available

A mobile website does not need to be installed, thus bypassing an important step in the acquisition of a client. Moreover, compatibility issues such as Android vs iOS environments will be mostly wiped out. Access can also be more easily granted such as via simple SMS or QR Codes. Once again, increasing the availability reflects a positive user experience.

2. Return on Investments

The app-building sector has made huge strides in lowering down the costs associated to app building, however, the investments tend to still be higher than the costs associated to having a mobile-friendly website. Lower costs are the result of shorter development cycles, which in turn translate into a faster deployment and quicker feature-launch.

3. Increased cross-platform marketing

Similar to standard websites, mobile-friendly website pages will features into search results and industry-specific sources. The increased cross-platform browsing shared history will also ensure that the website searches and access are readily available for the user, making it all the more easier to access. This will ultimately lead to a better ROI for the marketing team where the same marketing efforts can yield positive results across different platforms.

4. Easier back-office use

Whether having a website or an app or even both, the team needs to ensure that it is kept constantly up-to-date. This may translate into manual data inputting or integrations to third-party systems. When having one unique platform such as a website which is also mobile-friendly, will surely make the lives of the back-office staff easier and somewhat simpler as all the efforts will be focused onto one single platform rather than juggling between the app and the website.

Conclusion?

There are way too many aspects to look into prior to give an answer, and the simple truth is that this is not a black or white kind of answer. In parallel to the points mentioned here above, we need to look into the business and the aims it wants to achieve. One key reminder is that the business is the determining factor and not the other way round. Therefore, business decisions need to be made without being limited by the technology choices made.