A question many business owners and entrepreneurs struggle with whether they should design a responsive website that works across devices or focus exclusively on building a native mobile app.
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. But, 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.
If your company can afford it, some may 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. But most companies can’t afford to do both, which is why it’s important to understand the advantages of both options when considering your company’s mobile priorities.
Responsive design
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 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 visibility in the search engines is an important part of your strategy to grow your business, then a responsive website is critical...
Brian Honigman
Depending on your designer and the size of your website, a responsive Web design often takes far less time to create than a mobile app since there’s no app store approval or extensive guidelines to follow as compared to what Google Play, the Apple app store and the Windows Phone app store require for launching an app.
...a responsive Web design often takes far less time to create than a mobile app...
Brian Honigman
If the goal of your presence online is to be universally accessible from any device, then responsive design is the solution. A mobile app is designed for a unique experience; exclusive to the operating system it lives on, which means it isn’t a one size fits all fix.
Again, the choice between responsive and a mobile app depends on what your goals are for mobile.
A good example is the Layar App recently bought by Blippar. The App allows the user to view interactive content on paper, it is the product essentially rather than a website.