Mobile App Or Mobile Website: Who Wins The Race?

 

Are you still wondering and trying to find out which one is better, Mobile app or Mobile website? Then, this is certainly the best place for you to resolve your dilemma.

 

Inevitably, nowadays organizations are becoming aware of the fact, for a successful business, it is important to embrace a mobile strategy. More than 65% of earth’s population owns a mobile phone, which is expected to reach 5.07 billion by the end of 2019.

 

However, what is the right way to utilize mobile strategies, mobile app or a mobile website, is still a topic to mull over. Many entrepreneurs argue that you do not need a mobile app when you have a mobile website. On the other hand, a large number of people believe that mobile apps have multiple benefits as compared to mobile websites.

 

Therefore, before choosing any of them for your business, multiple factors need to be considered. Sounds easy? No, it is not as easy as it seems to be, hence to know more about it, read the upcoming section.

 

 

Mobile Website: Pros and Cons

 

Pros

● Immediacy: A mobile website is accessible instantly to users through a browser across a range of devices i.e. iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, etc. No matter where you are, you can check the website in just a blink of an eye.

 

● Compatibility: It is very simple to reach users all around the world, using different types of mobile phones with the help of a single website. Moreover, the URL of a mobile website can be integrated within other mobile technologies like QR Codes, SMS, and near field communication (NFC).

 

● Upgradability: Another advantage of a mobile website is that it is dynamic as compared to an app in terms of flexibility, in order to update the content. In case, you wish to modify the design or content of a website, you can simply publish the edited one and all the modifications are immediately visible.

 

● Findability: It is much easier for users to find a mobile website because its pages can be displayed in search results and listed in industry-specific directories, resulting in a simpler way to find you. In addition, visitors to your website can be sent to your mobile site automatically when they are on a handheld.

 

● Shareability: It is very easy to share the URLs of a mobile website between users through a link. Publishers can redirect users to the mobile website from a website or blog. As a result, mobile websites make it easy to reach users quickly.

 

● Time and Cost: A mobile website is always available for users and is time and cost-effective, especially, if you need to have a presence on multiple platforms. Therefore, it indirectly helps to increase the revenue of an organization.

 

Cons

● Convenience: Unlike an application, a mobile website cannot leverage all the smartphone’s features efficiently. GPS, cameras, phone dialing, etc. integrated into mobile devices are not always designed for the mobile websites, even though APIs, as well as libraries, aimed to resolve these problems.

 

● Screen Size: Without any doubt, portability is the main cause why users tend to choose smaller devices on the go, but mobile devices display a lot less content compared to a desktop or laptop screen. Both a mobile and responsive website are not fully accessible to all the content present on the desktop.

 

● Offline Access: Regardless of the fact that you design a mobile website in most informative and lightest way, it still may work in an offline mode with some restricted functionality using cached pages.

 

 

Mobile Apps: Pros and Cons

 

Pros

● Interactivity or Gaming: For interactive games, such as Angry Birds, an app is always going to be your best choice, no matter what, at least for foreseeable future.

 

● Personalization: In case, your target audiences are going to use the designed app regularly in a personalized fashion, such as EverNote, then an app certainly can give a way to do that and make the entire task easy.

 

● Reporting or Complex Calculations: If you require something, which will take data and enable you to manipulate it with complicated calculations, reports or charts, a mobile app will help you to achieve it effectively.

 

● Native Functionality: With the advancement of technology, mobile web browsers are becoming functional day-by-day at accessing certain mobile-specific functions like SMS, GPS, etc. However, if you want to access a processing power or user’s camera, an app will still do that much more efficiently.

 

● No Dependency on the Internet:  A mobile app can be used without the Internet connection and you can provide the offline access to the content or perform functions.

 

Cons

● Compatibility: One of the key cons of a mobile app is that it should meet all the requirements of a specific operating system, in order to function properly. This means every platform, be it Android, iOS, and Windows, needs a separate app version. Even the cross-platform solution does not offer full support for every feature and module of each operating system.

 

● Support and Maintenance: When an app is designed for numerous platforms, it takes more money, as well as time. You need to give the upgrades, as well as fix compatibility problems for every type of device, which is a frequent process. Along with this, you need to inform your users about these updates and tell them to download the latest version of the app that takes time and effort.

 

 

Conclusion

From all the above discussion, it can be interpreted easily that building a mobile website or a mobile app, largely depends on your business goals and objectives. If you want to offer an user-interactive content to a wide range of users, then a mobile website is probably what you need. However, if you wish to interact, engage, and communicate with your customers, a mobile app is the best choice for you.

 

About The Author: Writing comes to Neha as a passion that she is pursuing as a career. Being the senior technical writer at MobileAppDaily, she loves jotting down the ideas about the latest technology to offer insightful information to the readers about everything that breaks the internet.