It’s a difficult choice to make since both options present advantages and disadvantages that must be taken into consideration when moving forward.
As of last year, apps from retail businesses took up to 27 percent of consumer’s time, which sheds lights on how critical a mobile app can be to reaching your customers where they are active online. At the same time, 67 percent of consumers say they are more likely to purchase from a mobile-friendly website than they are from a website not optimized for devices other than desktop.
It’s a tough call to make when deciding between responsive design or an app, but in the end, it depends on the goals of your business.
If your company can afford it, it’s highly recommended that you build both a responsive site and a native mobile app in order to help your business work towards capturing the attention of your entire mobile audience. The native mobile app will provide a mobile centric experience for your existing and most loyal customers, while your responsive website can help provide an optimized experience to new and old visitors browsing your website or discovering it for the very first time.
For example, popular ecommerce brand Nasty Gal has a responsive website and a mobile app to help provide the best experience for its shoppers however they wish to shop the brand’s products.
Most companies can’t afford to do both, which is why it’s important to understand the advantages of both options when addressing your company’s mobile priorities.
Responsive design isn’t a cure-all
Responsive Web design is certainly the most affordable option for your business as compared to the development of a mobile app. Take into consideration the initial costs of redesigning your website to be mobile friendly, then the cost of occasional upkeep and upgrades.If visibility in the search engines is an increasingly important part of your strategy to grow your business, then a responsive website is critical in helping grow traffic to your website. A mobile app lives in a closed environment and cannot be indexed by the search engines, which requires driving traffic to this app through alternate methods.
If the target of one's destination online is usually to be universally accessible from any device, then responsive design could be the solution. A portable app is designed for an original experience; exclusive to the operating-system it lives on, which means it isn't a one size fits all fix.
However, don't consider responsive design as the easy way out as it pertains to optimizing your website across mobile devices. Although a responsive website optimizes your experience, it doesn't incorporate all of the mobile phone features just like the camera or GPS that a native mobile app can.
A portable app can provide users with unique functionality and speed that can't be achieve with a responsive website, but can be experienced on the operating-system you select to design your app on.
It's better than lacking a mobile-friendly version of one's website, but it's not the finally solution for the customer's experience with your organization on mobile. Again, the option between responsive and a mobile app depends on which your goals are for mobile.
Consult analytics to inform your native mobile app
A portable app supplies a compelling, unique and mobile specific experience for your customers, which will be among the major causes why your company must look into designing a software over worrying all about making your existing website mobile-friendly.First and foremost, when you yourself have existing data to analyze than it is important to utilize your analytics tools like Google Analytics or Omniture to see what mobile devices are employed the absolute most to see your website in recent months. This can help inform what operating-system you determine to design your app on.
Whether you determine to choose iOS, Android, Windows Phone or another less popular os, it's essential to complement the options that come with the os with the kind of app you're looking to generate whether it's an ecommerce store, a content focused website etc.
Besides to be able to utilize more of the features incorporated in a portable device into the knowledge, a portable app often has usage of more data from a consumer and therefore, provides a far more personalized experience.
This personalization through data could play out in the forms of push notifications an application sends you, product recommendations, suggested content to see and other specific user-driven actions. When a consumer makes a profile on an application, it generates gathering data about an individual and their online habits much simpler for a small business and much quicker and smoother for the consumer continually applying this app to look, find events to go to, tune in to music and perform other tasks.
Currently, an indigenous mobile app offers the very best user experience for an individual on a portable device because there are still limitations to how HTML 5 could be parsed on mobile.
While the complexity of the responsive website increases, the much more likely the consumer experience will quickly suffer. An indigenous mobile app offers the very best user experience to your audience, using the phone's functions and the expectations of customers using these devices.
Lastly, in-app purchasing drives 76 percent of app marketplace revenues up to now since once it's setup, it's particularly possible for users to create a purchase with pre-entered charge card information.
This is most effective if your app will offer micro-purchases, which our good deal point products or services within the app, like buying virtual goods, membership to the premium version of the app or usage of additional content.
