If you are a business owner, then it’s very essential that you make sure that your customers can easily find you through their smartphones or mobile devices. Nowadays we all know that more than half of the entire internet traffic is coming via mobile, at any time of the day. According to Google mobile searches have drastically grown over the past decade and look set to continue growing in the near future. Therefore, if you’re presenting poor performance to your mobile users, you’re most likely to lose a large proportion of your traffic. But this doesn’t essentially mean every business must build a mobile app. The alternative is to build a website that is well-optimized for mobile; which might actually be a smart choice in a few cases. As ever, the right decision always depends upon the nature of the business, its resources and its user base.
Let’s have a look at the different roles of websites and mobile apps and how businesses must proceed.
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In a lot of ways, a dedicated app and a mobile site might perform up to an extent the same thing. Both are most likely to convey information concerning a business and either can help users to place orders via their phones.
However, there are slight differences in the manner of each function, which the creators must take into consideration. For example, it is not possible to install a website which means, it won’t be that easy and quick for the user to load up.
On the other hand,Apps which are custom-made for mobiles are expected to be more reliable and less prone to freezing or crashing and will have a better UI & UX. This means that the apps are likely to take advantage of additional native features that a phone has like GPS, SMS or in-app purchase.
Though, few mobile sites are amazingly well made to the extent that the experience they offer is extremely similar to an app. The most excellent mobile sites feature nice and big buttons that are touch-friendly, attractive animations and intuitive menus. Few Websites still take advantage of a lot of things like GPS, click-to-call etc. For heavy readings or big purchases, users prefer to sit down at a desk and explore things on a big screen. In this case, an app certainly can’t bring much to your table and might not be a great use of time for any company to develop.
The manner in which you market an app is to some extent different from the manner you market a website. Notably, you can’t utilize SEO to point users to some particular ‘page’ in any app. For instance, if you own an e-commerce website, then you can utilize several savvy search optimizations to make sure that visitors are easily able to locate specific items in your store via Google. If anyone searches for ‘buy flowers online’, they can get straight away taken to a company’s selection of flowers ready to click ‘buy’. No installation is required.
This certainly isn’t possible by means of an app or at least for the time being. This is something Google is seeking to fix in the near future. This addition is likely to make apps more instant by eliminating the need to first download for use.
In short, you’re less likely to find new customers with the help of an app but it’s amazing for impressing as well as retaining the existing ones.
Another point to consider is the learning curve as well as the necessary investment associated with building a mobile responsive website vs a mobile application. Typically, building a mobile responsive website is far easier for a small business as compared to building an app and there are numerous reasons for the same.
For starters, creating a website means there is one platform where everyone can find information related to your business. If your design is well-optimized, it will work with everything from Android to Windows phones to iOS or even Xbox One. On the other hand, building a mobile app would certainly mean creating multiple versions for the various platforms.
Creating a mobile site conversely will normally mean utilizing the best of WordPress. When all’s said and done, the majority of businesses will really require a website and have no other option than to provide one. Hence, if you’re set with your website the most you should do is make it mobile-friendly.
To reiterate though, the final and best decision will always be based on the nature of the business. It’s good to include both an app and a website. But if you need to choose one, go for the one that offers the most value to your business and users.
