Mobile Websites vs Apps

Mobile Websites vs Apps

There is an ongoing debate regarding apps vs mobile websites and which is better. While each serves a purpose, we believe that e-commerce enabled mobile websites can provide rich, dynamic user-experiences that exceed apps in many areas. In practice, many apps are actually website wrappers, a mobile website inside an app framework. Native apps are typically only required to access lower-level APIs unavailable to the browser, like phonebooks and the camera. Hardware features needed for an e-commerce site, like GPS access for a store locator, are available to a mobile website.

Organic Search

A compelling reason to go with a mobile website over an app is for organic search. App stores represent a single sales and marketing channel, and are relatively small compared to the web. An application is only available by searching through an app store, downloading the app, and finding and running the app from your phone. A mobile website is available through any browser, and discoverable by any major search engine. If your search ranking is high, your site will be one of the first results in Google or other search engines. This way, users who are looking for a specific item will be brought to the correct item page on your mobile site, even if they are not looking for it specifically at your store. For example, the first result for a Google search for “graphic t shirts” will be Threadless.com, even though they are not specifically mentioned.

Social Media

Mobile websites also excel in social sharing. When people post links on Twitter, Facebook, or other social media destinations, Mobify’s technology allows mobile visitors who follow these links to transparently get a mobile experience. This means the same link will give an optimized experience to a desktop or mobile user, no matter what device they are viewing it on. For instance, if a mobile user tweets a link to a specific book on Alibris’ mobile site, a desktop user click on that same link will get the desktop version of that page. The same works if a mobile user tweets a link to a desktop user, no matter how deep the link is.

Sharing information from within an app is typically not as simple as sharing a URL.

Platform Independent

Unlike apps, mobile websites are also platform agnostic, meaning that you only have to design it once, and it will work across all platforms. Apps only work on the OS they were designed for, making supporting multiple platforms a costly and time consuming endeavour, although there are platforms like PhoneGap that allow you to design a basic app and use it across various platforms.

Updating a mobile website is simple compared to updating an app, which involves redesigning it and waiting for it to go through the uncertain and lengthy approval process for various app stores.

Mobile Web and Apps as Companions

Apps represent an excellent complement to a great mobile website. Mobify’s area of expertise is in the area of mobile web, but we work with partners to provide native app design and implementation services. Mobify’s web technology can be used inside of a native app to significantly decrease app development time and is integrated into numerous iPhone and tablet apps including an iPhone app from Threadless and GAP’s 1969 Stream iPad app.

Threadless Mobile Homepage

The GAP’s iPad app is a particularly interesting as it is built around a completely unique, custom interface, designed by an agency, while some of its functions use Mobify’s mobile web platform.

Mobify’s mobile sites can also prompt first time users to add a shortcut icon to their mobile home screens, giving a mobile website a persistent on device presence, similar to native apps.

Mobify works with app design agencies for app implementation.

Generally, the mobile website is wrapped in a simple application shell, which can also provide any extra any additional native functionality that’s required. This solution is simple, and keeps the app development in the hands of specialized app development agencies, while decreasing the effort required from these agencies as they do not need to develop a completely new product viewing and checkout flow. This also bypasses the need to provide an alternative secure payment and order processing system as your existing ecommerce site acts as the “backend”. Removing this development piece alone can represent a savings of months of development effort and reduced complexity. Creating a great mobile site and then wrapping it in native application shells allows you to target the largest channel – web, and complement it with the app store channels for individual mobile OS providers such as iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7, and Blackberry.

Threadless iPhone App