Mobile App or Mobile Website Which is Best?
What is a mobile website?
There was a time not so far back in the future when smartphone, tablets, or any other mobile devices of any kind were not really a ‘thing’. In those times the websites were developed only to be displayed on laptops or desktop computers. At this stage the design was not built to be responsive, which essentially means that it lacked the natural capacity to scale itself according to the screen size that it was being viewed on, hence viewing them on smaller screens was not so easy. This was not really an issue at the initial stage, but as the mobile devices became more and more popular, and slowly began assuming the position of the preferred medium of accessing content on the web. This brought the challenges of using a website to light. This is when mobile websites emerged as a solution to this discomfort of the people who were mostly on the go and depended on their mobile devices when it came to accessing content. This led to quite a few small and medium business owners to create a mobile version for their existing websites so that their users could easily view the website and their content even when they were on the move and use them without a mouse, instead with taps.
What is the difference between a mobile site and a mobile app?
The mobile apps and the mobile website are both meant to be accessed through hand held devices like smartphones or tablets. Like any other website, a mobile website too consists of browser based HTML pages linked together and accessed over internet (WiFi, 3G, or 4G networks for mobile).
Mobile apps, however are actual applications that may be downloaded and then installed on your mobile device (smartphone or tab, or any other), instead of being rendered within a browser. In order to look for, and download apps, the users visit specific app stores according to their devices’ operating systems like Google Play Store, Apple App Store, Blackberry World and more. Unlike mobile websites, mobile apps can also pull content or data, even when they are not connected to the internet.
Factors That Would Help You Make A Choice
1) Speed & Accessibility
Does it need to be said? A mobile app is definitely a lot faster than a website, and many times more interactive making it an engaging experience for the users. Another fun thing that you can do with mobile apps is let them access phone features including the phone contacts, or GPS for navigation, or the phone camera, an ability that a website lacks totally. However, one important thing to remember is that the app first needs to be installed on the device before it can be used in any way and a mobile website that is built well can simply be accessed by navigating from a mobile web browser.
So, though the mobile app is a lot faster and easier to use, the app has accessibility issues as it needs to be installed first on the device. Apart from this, the app that you design would have to be developed separately for all the platforms including Google Play Store, Apple App Store, Microsoft Store, and more! This is so because developing the app for just one platform is going to limit your audience for sure. However, one major benefit of developing an app is that it can actually make your content available to the users even when there is no internet connectivity.