Mobile apps · 7 min read
Do you need an app, or a better website?
"We need an app" usually means "our customers are on their phones". That is true, and it is usually a website problem. Here is how to tell when it is not.
In short
Most businesses do not need an app. They need a website that works properly on a phone — which reaches everyone without an install, can be found through search and shared in a message, and is updated for everyone at once. An app earns its place when the job needs something a website does poorly: push notifications people rely on, use without a connection, the camera or other parts of the phone, or a task the same person repeats often enough to keep an icon on their home screen. If the job is reading about you, browsing what you sell or filling in a form, a well-built website serves people better than asking them to install something.
Key points
- "Our customers are on their phones" is a reason to have a good mobile website, not by itself a reason to build an app.
- An app is worth it when the job needs push notifications, offline use, the camera or other device features, or very frequent repeat use.
- A website reaches people with no install, can be found in search, and can be shared as a link — an app gives up all three.
- Apps carry ongoing costs a website does not: two app stores, yearly OS updates and store policy changes to keep up with.
- Something people do a few times a year — booking, enquiring, buying occasionally — is almost always better as a website.
- Something a person does every day, on the move, with their phone's camera, is the kind of job that genuinely needs an app.
The question behind the question
When a business asks us for an app, the reason is nearly always the same: their customers are on their phones. That observation is right. The conclusion often is not.
People being on their phones means the business needs to work well on a phone. A website can do that — load quickly, read comfortably, let someone buy, book or enquire with a thumb — without asking anyone to find an app in a store, wait for it to download and give it permissions first. For most businesses, that step is where most of the audience would have stopped.
So the useful question is not "app or website?" in general. It is: what does this particular job need that a website cannot give it?
What a website already does on a phone
A properly built website is already a mobile product. It adapts to the screen it is opened on, and it has three advantages an app has to work hard to match.
- No install. Someone taps a link and they are in. Every step between a person and what they came for loses some of them, and an install is a big step.
- It can be found. Web pages appear in search results; the screens inside an app do not appear there the same way.
- It can be shared. A link in a WhatsApp message opens for anyone who taps it. An app link asks them to install something first.
A website is also updated for everyone at once. An app update waits for store review and then for each person's phone to install it.
Four signs a job genuinely needs an app
There are things a website does poorly, and when a job depends on them, an app is the right tool. These are the four we look for.
- Notifications people rely on. If the product only works when it can tap someone on the shoulder — a shift starting, an order arriving, a reminder that matters — an app does that dependably.
- Use without a connection. Work that happens in a basement, a warehouse or on the road, where signal comes and goes, is safer in an app built to cope with it.
- The camera and the rest of the phone. Scanning a code, photographing a delivery, using the phone's location as part of the task — an app has fuller and more reliable access to the device.
- Very frequent use by the same people. A task someone does every day is worth an icon on their home screen. A task they do twice a year is not.
On the app side of the line: attendance at a worksite
3G ManPower supply warehouse and industrial workers to client sites in Singapore, on shifts, often for a day at a time. Paper sign-in sheets and supervisors' WhatsApp messages do not survive that — and payroll is what pays for it at the end of the month.
We built them an attendance system with apps for workers and supervisors. Each site displays a QR code that changes every thirty seconds, so a photo of yesterday's code is worthless. A worker scans it on arrival to start the shift and again to finish, and the app shows them their own clock-in time and running hours, so the record they are trusting is one they can see. A scan only counts if the worker has a shift at that site, inside its time window.
Every one of the four signs is there. It uses the camera. It is used every working day by the same people. Those people are on a site floor, not at a desk. And the record has to be trustworthy enough to pay people from. That is an app job — a website would have been a worse version of it.
On the website side: booking a physiotherapist
Physio Friend run physiotherapy clinics in Singapore. What a patient needs to do on a phone is understand a treatment, pick a clinic and book an appointment — something they do now and then, not every day.
Asking a new patient to install an app before they can book would lose many of them at the first step. So we rebuilt their website around the one action that matters, booking, and made sure it works on the phone in the patient's hand. None of the four signs applies, and the website is the better tool.
The costs of an app that do not show up in the quote
An app is not just more expensive to build. It costs more to keep. There are usually two of them — one for iPhone, one for Android — each going through its own store's review. Apple and Google update their operating systems every year and change their store rules along the way, and an app that is not kept up with them starts to break or gets pulled.
None of that means an app is a bad idea. It means the decision should be made knowing that an app is a product you keep running, not a thing you buy once. We offer ongoing app care for exactly this — OS updates, store policy changes and fixes — and without it the app still works, but keeping it current becomes your job.
If you do need one: native or cross-platform
Native apps are built separately for iPhone and Android, in each platform's own tools. Cross-platform apps share one codebase across both. Native is the better choice where performance or deep use of the platform's features matters; cross-platform where getting to both stores quickly, and maintaining one codebase rather than two, matters more.
Most business apps sit comfortably on the cross-platform side. The ones that do not tend to know it already, because they are doing something unusual with the device.
What we will tell you
We build both — websites and stores for most of our clients, and apps where the job calls for one, including our own apps on the App Store. That is why we can be straight about which one a project needs: we have nothing to gain from steering you to the bigger build.
If you are not sure which side of the line your idea sits on, describe the job: who uses it, how often, where they are when they do, and what it has to do on their phone. The answer usually falls out of those four questions.
Questions
Frequently asked
Is an app better than a website for being found online?
No — usually the reverse. Web pages appear in search results and can be shared as a link that opens for anyone. The screens inside an app do not appear in search the same way, and an app link asks people to install something first.
Can a website send notifications like an app?
In some cases. Browsers on Android can show notifications from a website, and on iPhone a website can once it has been added to the home screen. If the product depends on notifications reaching people reliably, an app is still the dependable way to do it.
Do we need an iPhone app and an Android app?
If the people using it have both kinds of phone, yes. A cross-platform app covers both from one codebase, which is often the sensible way to do it; native apps are built separately for each.
What does it cost to keep an app running?
More than a website, because there are two app stores to keep up with, yearly operating system updates and changing store rules. We quote app care per project; the point to plan for is that an app is something you keep running, not a one-time purchase.