Does My Organization Need a Mobile App?
We’ve had quite a few conversations with clients over the past five years about creating mobile apps for their organization. Before responsive websites were as functional, native mobile applications were very popular tools for organizations to increase engagement with their users. There are many reasons why we believe this is no longer the recommended approach and will walk through some of those considerations below.
Marketing
Early-on, maybe 10 years ago, it was a large advantage to have your app listed in the app store. Your organization received free marketing and exposure by just being listed. Now, with over 4.6M mobile apps in the app stores, you are lucky if your intended consumer can locate your app. Also, the app store search engines aren’t as effective as a web-based search so, unless your app has a very unique name, it can be quite difficult for your users to locate the app to download.
Maintenance
Native mobile apps (iOS / Android) require a huge amount of ongoing maintenance when built properly. First of all, iOS and Android utilize two completely separate codebases to develop their apps — so you will have to maintain two separate applications. Each time an iOS or Android OS update is issued your team would need to evaluate the impact of that update on your app. Mobile platform updates have significantly greater impact on the stability of native apps than a web-based application. For all but the largest organizations, maintaining three separate codebases (iOS, Android, and Web Browser) is typically cost preventative and doesn’t make good business sense.
Technical Limitations
There was a time when native apps offered far more functionality than web-based platforms, but that advantage has now been completely eliminated. Whether performing e-commerce purchases, signing up for subscriptions, or wanting notifications — web-based mobile applications can now support all of these various use-cases. Native mobile apps may have performance benefits for very specific types of features, but in general web-based applications can handle anything you’d want a native app to.
Web-Based Mobile Apps
Providing your users with an alternative experience of your website / store / tool / platform on mobile devices is a powerful way to engage more of your mobile users. Features such as specific user interface, mobile optimized interactions, notifications, and specialized bookmarking tips help your organization gain all the benefits of a native mobile application with none of the drawbacks.
In Conclusion
If you have any questions about how a web-based mobile app could work well for your organization please reach out to us and we’d enjoy having a further conversation regarding.
