Having a mobile web presence for your online business has become a need of the hour. A recent Google report indicates that smartphones have reached 56% of the US market, and 46% of these users have made a purchase on their mobile device. Businesses will end up missing a huge opportunity if they choose to ignore their mobile presence. The first crucial decision you need to make before going mobile is whether to go with a Mobile Website or a Mobile Application. In this post we will evaluate both these options to help you make the right choice:
Mobile Applications: Mobile applications must be designed and developed for a particular mobile platform or operating system. This could include any or all of these – IOS (Apple), Android, Windows, Blackberry. Developing a mobile application for your business can be quite a time-consuming process. Even though it is an expensive exercise, it can often be well worth the time and cost invested in it.
Mobile apps tend to be more successful when they provide real value to users by leveraging the functionality of the mobile device. A device’s camera, user’s GPS location, voice recognition, bar/QR code scanner, and other functionalities should be utilized to provide relevant and engaging content to your audience via a custom developed mobile application. Ensure using a good mobile app development company for this.
Mobile Websites: In the vast majority of cases, mobile applications may not actually be the best choice for marketing your business to mobile users. Most of the times, businesses just need to provide a decent mobile experience of their existing websites. If your website acts as a primary digital selling tool and you do not require any mobile device functionality then developing a good mobile website is a far better choice than building a mobile application. Many business owners are under the impression that their HTML site provides a decent user experience on mobile devices. But the fact is that almost always the website will fail to perform as well as a mobile-optimized or a responsive website. Larger buttons and calls to action for finger tapping, increased spacing between elements to avoid tap conflict, and quick load times are some examples of elements that are included in a responsive site. By developing a responsive site, your business can experience an increase in traffic, decrease in bounce rate, which in turn will affect the conversion rate across visitors from mobile devices.