When was the last time you clicked on a desktop icon to launch a brand’s application instead of typing the URL in your web browser? For most of us it seems absurd, but mobile users do it every day to access applications on their smart phones.
With the current and projected growth of mobile in the digital space, it is an absolute necessity for businesses to have a mobile presence. Marketers are increasing their investment in mobile, but more often than not their only goal is to have a shiny icon tied to their brand that can be downloaded from the Apple App Store or Android Marketplace. But how many marketers are asking the important question: “Do we even need a mobile application or do we need a mobile-optimized website”?
Mobile vs. Web: What’s the difference?
Mobile (or native applications) refers to anything that is launched directly from the home screen of a phone’s operating system as opposed to being served from a web browser. These free or paid applications are typically downloaded from a marketplace owned by the device or operating system manufacturer, like Apple’s App Store or the Android Marketplace. Web applications refer to any mobile-optimized website that serves content from the web intended to be consumed on a mobile device.
The majority of these mobile websites (or web apps) are developed using some combination of HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript to create a more user-friendly experience. Advances in these technologies over the last 12 months have allowed mobile applications to offer many of the features that native applications have enjoyed without many of the barriers to entry presented by mobile applications.
The advantages of going mobile
Beyond the obvious cool factor of a native application, there are many advantages to developing a mobile application in lieu of a web application:
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Access to native APIs. Native applications can allow a user access to native device features such as the camera, photo albums, contacts, and other data stored on the device.
Consumer habits. Customers have become accustomed to downloading, accessing, and frequently using native applications. If someone doesn’t find what she is looking for in an app marketplace of choice, she may abandon her search altogether.
Ease of purchase. Since native applications can be purchased directly from an app marketplace like iTunes, users do not need to enter their credit card information each time they want to make a purchase. That reduces the barriers to one-time purchases as well as in-app purchases, which many application developers depend on for revenue.
Push notifications. Native applications have the ability to push notifications directly to the device in order to bring users back to the application. Web applications have to use email or SMS to reach a user on his mobile device.
Development standards. Since developers only need to create an application for one operating system (and often only one or two devices), developers familiar with the standards of that platform are able to follow the guidelines without cross-browser or cross-platform concerns.
The advantages of web apps
While web applications may not have the immediate mind share when someone mentions the word “app,” these applications offer many advantages:
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Cross-browser/platform. Web applications can be optimized for multiple operating systems and devices. Creating an application once and allowing customers to access it from whatever device they choose is often significantly less effort than creating individual applications for each platform.
Ease of distribution. As of late 2010, Android, iPhone, and Blackberry accounted for roughly 23% of all phones in the market. That means developing native apps for these platforms is alienating a large number of users with web-capable phones that can access mobile-optimized websites. Comscore reported that in April of 2011, 69 million people used a native application, while over 72 million accessed websites via their mobile web browser.
Instant deployment. Whereas a native app must go through an approval and deployment process controlled by the App Store or Android Marketplace, bug fixes or feature updates for web applications can be deployed nearly instantly to a server and accessed by users.
Access to native features. With recent HTML5 advances, web applications can now access a device’s GPS functionality and work in offline mode (to a certain extent). This makes web applications appear to function more like native applications.
Search engine relevance. If a brand develops a native application, the content of that app will only be found inside the application after a download. Web applications have the ability to be indexed by search engines just like a regular website. As a result, customers using search engines to find products or content will be able to find these applications without accessing an app store first.
Seamless experience. While in-app purchases typically convert less frequently, web applications offer a more seamless experience when clicking through on banner ads, visiting “deeper” content on a brand’s website, or completing a purchase outside of the application.
The big decision
So how do marketers decide which is best? The first key factor is that an application is a tactic, not a strategy. And businesses should always start with strategy, making decisions based on budget, customer demographics, products and services, time to market, and content that they plan to offer in their application.
If a business can’t identify a specific purpose for an application (i.e. content distribution, utility to customers, or entertainment value), then developing an application could be the wrong choice.
What other options exist?
After a strategy has been established it’s important to remember that there are more options than limiting your scope to a native or web application. Many businesses have seen success starting with a basic web application as an extension of the content or utility of their website and then scaled that presence to multiple native applications with similar or enhanced functionality.
A number of solutions also exist that allow web applications to launch from within a native application, bridging the gap between web and native and providing another option for companies who are not yet ready to commit to a fully native application.
