Apps Everywhere
It seems that every website you visit on your phone also has an app. On your computer, you open your web browser and navigate to amazon.com, walmart.com, facebook.com, or whereever you want to go. You don't have separate apps for Amazon, Walmart, Facebook,and every other company or service you might ever want to visit. However, on your phone, it's just the opposite. The browser is not enough, you need a different app for each service. Or do you? In most cases, probably not. I am perfectly able to buy anything I want on amazon.com using a browser, either on my phone or on my laptop. A well-designed website will detect the size of your screen and adjust the layout accordingly.
Apps can hog your phone storage
We have all been conditioned to think that everything we do on our phone needs an app.In some cases, there are a few features you can get from an app that you can't get using a web app, that is, viewing on a browser. But each native app we download takes up storage space on our phones. For example, Facebook uses 345 MB on my iPhone. If you have a phone with just 16 GB of storage, that's quite a hit.
Read More.The average smart phone user has 60-90 apps installed on their phone, but is spending 77% of their time just on their top three apps. Unless your app has special needs, Your customers are probably better served with a well-written website that is responsive to display size. And even if the app adds some special sauce, will your customers download it and add it to the glut of apps already on their phone?
Add to home screen option
Nobody likes to type long web addresses into a browser. This problem is solved by having excellent Search Engine Optimization - SEO - so that the user just types a key word and voila! the website appears. Or, alternatively, the customer can use the "save to home screen" option using Safari for iPhones or using Chrome for Android phones. After that, voila!, an icon is saved on your home screen to allow you to access that site with a single click.. Too bad more phone users aren't aware of this simple option.
Finally, the cost to create one well written website is much less than the cost to create a website for computer users, an iPhone app for Apple product users, and finally, an Android app for Sumsung users and most others.
For most companies, addiing phone apps to their offerings need not be a priority. But instead, businesses should strive to create the best website possible.
