According to statistics, 90% of mobile phones are smartphones. In the UK, 95% of of UK residents aged 16 and over own a smartphone. Your business needs a mobile presence, but should you invest in a dedicated mobile app or a mobile optimised website?

Let’s dive straight in to a comparison of the two;

	Dedicated App	Mobile Website
Created for mobile	✓	✓
Always on availability	✓	✓
Fully branded	✓	✓
Easy to maintain	✗	✓
Provide notifications	✓	✗
Available offline	✓	✗
Mobile device features	✓	✗

At a quick glance, a mobile app has a better feature set as it can be available when the user has no internet connection and is able to make native use of phone features such as camera, storage, location. Updating an app is often more difficult than updating a website however, as most websites feature a content management system (CMS) to manage it simply.

In our experience, in almost all scenarios, a mobile friendly website will be your first option. A website is made mobile friendly through something called ‘media queries’. Essentially, these are a set of rules that check for the screen size of the device. If the screen is desktop sized, used xx layout (3 columns for example), if the screen is a mobile screen, use yy layout (1 column instead of 3 for desktop).

The above is a very basic example but you get the idea. Any good website development agency should be creating both desktop and mobile website versions for all website projects as standard.

Advantages of a mobile app

Mobile apps come with some awesome advantages over a website. Depending on the use of the app, it can be used offline when the user has no internet connection. This is a huge boost, when travelling and data is patchy or unavailable, I always jump over to offline apps.

Apps can also use the mobile device features natively. Users can upload photos, either directly from camera or saved to device. We can use their location more efficiently than website geo-location but the biggest advantage is notifications.

Notifications ping to the users device, gaining their attention much better than email or sms, infact, open rates through notifications are as much as 2800% higher than email (source). Notifications can feature images or documents making them visually appealing.

Disadvantages of a mobile app

I don’t know about you, but we receive copious amounts of spam emails from ‘mobile app developers’. It would stress the heck out of me trying to find a professional company to create a mobile app. Many of the spam emails we receive look genuine, they may well be, but it all just screams dodgy to me. Hint: we are a genuine and reliable mobile app development company, and genuine and reliable mobile website developers.

Apps are also not as easy to keep updated. Say you change your company phone number, with a website you simply log into your website CMS, update the number and save. With an app, you may need to contact the developer, have them update the number and release an app update to the app store (there are much better ways, but this is how many app developers need to update info (we often create a mini app CMS, letting you change items easily with no need to redistribute the app)).

Typically apps are more expensive to create than websites, this is due to having to create for Apple and Android stores and the more complex coding language used for apps. Our prices aren’t massively higher, usually around 25% higher for an app over a similar website creation, whereas other agencies may charge a several hundred percent higher app premium.

Which should you choose, mobile app or website?

A website for most will be your first priority, but when you are ready to add more features, utilise phone notifications and generally look really cool having your own mobile app, a dedicated app is a superb choice.

You can provide more features, a sicker interface and easier access to your services through an app. Our customers with apps report much higher engagement with their customers, both initially and over a longer term.

Picking up your phone and opening and app is much more convenient than opening the phone browser, search for the website, find the correct website, log in to the website etc etc.

Our website and mobile app services

Being the amazing company we are, we provide both website and app creation services. We don’t need to send millions of spam emails, we don’t pretend to have an office in London and New York (virtual offices are a pet peeve of mine), we just create superb solutions each day for our customers.

All of our website projects include desktop, tablet and mobile website versions as standard. We can also update existing websites to be mobile friendly, the ease of that will depend on the quality of initial coding, but it is always possible.

We have created mobile apps for multinationals and small startups, passing stringent security tests benefitting from all kinds of functionality.

Whether you need a website or mobile app, or would just like a chat about the two, get in contact with us for a completely no obligation conversation.