Mobile Delivery - Site vs App?
What’s better? An app or a mobile site? If Harry Hill were writing this he’d shout ‘Fight!!!’ But he isn’t. John Campbell, managing director of Glasgow digital agency Spider Online takes a look at how a company can decide which to choose.
Many years ago, I had a hope that Internet technologies would provide the solution for delivering software across all Desktop platforms – Mac, Windows, Linux/Unix etc - without having to support multiple development environments or compromising on the design. The arrival of powerful javascript libraries such as jQuery helped to support this notion. You didn't even have to go around and install the software on all those PCs and updates became so much quicker and simpler.
At the time, one fly in the ointment was the mobile browser experience. The simple answer was to deploy a stripped-down version of the site or application focused on the needs of the user on the move. This could generally be put together using familiar tools and delivered over the same infrastructure. As the smart-phones available became more powerful and affordable, slowly more mobile users could actually just connect to the full-fat versions of their favourite sites. Maybe the inexorable improvement in technology would catch up and make mobile sites redundant?
Then along came the iPhone. Suddenly a whole new paradigm for delivery of mobile applications was born – and it got very popular very quickly. Just when it was safe to make an either/or/both decision, Google weighed into the fight with Android. Oh, and let's not mention WebOS and any other platforms waiting in the wings.
Clients now have a very disparate and somewhat confusing landscape to deal with when trying to make decisions on mobile delivery of their site or application. Mobile Internet usage is growing at a phenomenal rate and clients need to deliver or risk losing custom to quicker moving competitors.
What to do? As is often the case, the best advice is 'horses for courses'. Analysis is required of current and expected mobile usage. What are the customers looking for while out and about – can this be compared to standard desktop usage? Is it simply an information requirement or is there a product that can be purchased on the move. Often a mix and match approach is required with some aspects delivered via an app, others via a mobile website and finally the fail-safe of reverting back to the full site for everything else. Making sure the full-site is usable on the major mobile platforms is a plus.
Unfortunately, the downside is the additional up-front development and maintenance costs in supporting multiple delivery platforms. Sadly, this sounds like we're back just where we started.