Wednesday, 19 June 2013

Mobile Website Vs. Mobile App - Which One is Best For Your Business?


Mobile Website Vs. Mobile App
Having a strong online presence for your brand is not enough but at the same time having a powerful mobile strategy for your brand is also extremely important. Mobile sites are usually cheaper than Mobile application development. But mobile sites are relatively easy to update. You often have to make adjustments for each different mobile operating system in order to update applications. With an app you target only one platform but with an optimized web site you target all the browsers in the world. It is quite complex to monitor customer in an app but there exists plenty of tools for the website. Hiring appropriate mobile application developers is an important and not an easy task.

Various benefits of Mobile application development compared with developing mobile websites are as follows:
  • Less internet restrictions: Mobile websites always require the user to be connected to the internet in some way. While a lot of apps do not require internet connection and can be used offline.
  • Strong mobile engagement: Creating a mobile website is a great start to going mobile but it is just that a mere start. Mobile sites can’t really give you any insight into how people actually use mobile. But in order to capture the real opportunity of mobile, you only need to have an application developed by mobile application developers. Applications are a better platform for engaging users based on how they actually use mobile.
  • Cooler visuals: Due to various restricted bandwidth and technology reasons, the effects and graphics on a mobile website can be very limited. Mobile apps also have the powerful capabilities to portray high quality graphics and effects, which presents users with a better and enhanced looking visual.
  • Better user experience: Applications have a stronger capability to create a better user experience than mobile website. Applications are altogether a better experience when people are using them frequently.
  • More Features: Mobile apps give you unlimited access to the phone’s features such as GPS capabilities, the camera, microphone, etc. while mobile websites can give you very limited access to the phone’s capabilities.
  • Speed: Mobile apps also have the ability to run a lot faster than mobile websites.
  • Navigation: Navigation on mobile websites can be somewhat static. But on apps it can have a more interactive user interface.
  • Perceiving application as better with respect to mobile website: From the statistics point, it is believed that near about 70% of total users said they prefer mobile apps as compared with mobile websites. They preferred apps because they strongly believe that apps are more fast, convenient and easier to browse compared as with websites.
  • Interaction time: Users actually use apps more frequently and also for much longer amount of time if they have started liking it as compared with the mobile website. So your application is likely to gain enough value to get maximum users spending much quality time interacting with your related content.