It seems these days everyone has an app; the local pizza restaurant, your gym, perhaps even your school or workplace. While an exploding trend in this connected age, going to the expense of developing an application is not worth it for everyone. Here are three reasons that your business may be able to accomplish just as much (if not more) with a well-designed and responsive website instead.
1. Speed
Think about the process of downloading an app – opening the app store, navigating to the search page, searching, downloading, installing, opening, registering…
That’s a lot of wasted time for the customer. When browsing on mobile, information should be as close to instant as possible – and if something can be accomplished with a quick Google search, a well organised PPC campaign and neat landing pages, the customer will have more time to spend on your purchase or contact page than waiting around for your app to download. Don’t give your customers time to consider your competitors!
2. Size
Size is precious, and so is your brand. Customers are met with the dreaded “phone storage full” message all too frequently, and so set about purging bulky applications to free up space for their favourite song at the concert or that amazing panorama at the top of the mountain. Unless you can guarantee that your app is amazingly useful, beautiful, crucial and above all, small in size, then it would be at risk of being discarded in lieu of something else. This may not seem like a big deal, but if a customer only interacts with you through an app, they may struggle to rebuild that association with a website. Of course, a website doesn’t have this problem and serves the purpose of being available all the time, anywhere, on a whim.
3. Fragmentation
The Android versus iOS war is well documented and brutal. There are amazing exclusive applications on both sides; building beautiful, responsive and useful apps for both platforms (to avoid alienating half of your target market) is costly, but favouring one over the other is a risky move. Having a responsive website that scales to fit all screen sizes and provides a consistent and reliable experience for all avoids this problem entirely; meaning no-one gets left out of the party!