Smartphone applications (apps) seem to be the newest “must-have” item for tech-savvy retail stores and businesses. It seems like most consumers now own a smart phone.  So it stands to reason that as a business you have likely considered how an app could benefit your business.

Mobile apps definitely have the potential to build your business and engage your customers; however with all the buzz about apps many people overlook another option: Mobile Website Optimization.

Mobile Website Optimization refers to creating a website that is specifically created for mobile browsers. In most cases, this is a version of your current site except it is optimized to work with mobile browsers. There are distinct advantages to building a mobile site before building an app, or for building a mobile site in conjunction with an app. Some of these benefits include:

Better Compatibility
Lower Cost
Customer Usability

The Case for Mobile Browsers

In order to make the case for mobile sites, it is important to look at the market and provenance of mobile browsers. Almost 30% of US adults use their phones to browse the web. As the next generations of smart phones are launched, mobile browsing will only continue to grow. Many carriers are also requiring mandatory data plans with the sale of web-enabled phones, anticipating the growth of mobile web use.

Additionally, many non-phone mobile devices use a “limited function” browser to browse the web. This includes tablet devices such as the iPad™ and Amazon’s Kindle™ Reader. These devices also usually benefit from a mobile site, though not as significantly as smart phones.

This presents challenges to many companies who have invested in a very good and very effective website, but suffer from it being  incompatible with mobile browsers, or just plain difficult to use on mobile devices.

Specifically, sites programmed in Flash® are currently not compatible with almost any phone browser. Flash sites are excellent tools for traditional desktop browsers, and provide great tools for customer engagement, but are completely dysfunctional on mobile phones. Even if this changes with some of the new OS launches and upgrades this year, Flash sites will still require some mobile optimization to exhibit the same level of effectiveness.

However, since we’re big users of Silverlight™, we have heard rumors that Silverlight will be a part of the developer kit for Windows Phone 7 Series™. This means rich Internet applications and websites on mobile phones, which is exciting for not just us, but for your business as well.

Even simple sites can still be difficult to use in a mobile browser. Clicking on drop-down menus, using navigation menus, or inputting data into the right fields can be frustrating on a mobile device. Mobile optimized sites understand that you are using your finger to navigate and that you only get a few inches of screen real-estate to work with.

The Downside of Apps

Some sites have chosen to circumvent website compatibility and usability issues by offering apps that provide the same features as their website. Unfortunately apps are also extremely platform specific, meaning that without having an app on each platform, you are alienating a portion of your potential traffic.

Specifically, even an iPhone™ app still ignores at least 50% of your potential users in the US, and that is only if every iPhone owner uses the app instead of trying to go to the website. Basically, in many cases an app is used as a Band-Aid® rather than a cure.

To illustrate this, icrossing created a map that illustrates the popularity of different mobile browsers by country. This is based on data from Statcounter, which is an analytics service installed on over 3 million sites.  Although the data is only a small sample of the web, it illustrates the importance of creating sites that are optimized for mobile browsers, rather than relying solely on apps. This chart shows that substituting an app for an optimized website will leave out a major portion of your intended audience, and still will not address the problem of a website that is dysfunctional on mobile browsers.

The Ups and Downs of Mobile Browsing

Websites have some distinct advantages over apps. For starters, websites do not require the download, installation and use of a particular program in order to use. As recent research has shown, 85 percent of apps are deleted within 30 days of being downloaded, which can hurt if your investment depends on the app’s long term use.

One word of caution about mobile browsing, and definitely something to consider, is that mobile sites are also not “one size fits all.”  Well, truly, one site can work with almost all browsers, if not all browsers, however it drastically diminishes your creativity and restricts the content of the site.

Even so, as smart phones get smarter and more powerful, they will be much more capable of displaying different types of content. Among a few others, iPhone, Android™ and Windows Phone 7 Series  are capable of displaying fairly advanced markup languages, including XHTML, CSS3, JavaScript, and AJAX (and hopefully Silverlight & Flash soon too!). However, even these phones still benefit from mobile-optimized versions of sites because of the improved usability that mobile sites provide.

Ignoring some compatibility issues among some of the lower-class smart phones, including display size, program compatibility, and particular browser issues, mobile websites still can reach a broader audience than can an individual app.

Additionally, costs can be less expensive than developing an app. Costs obviously vary widely according to specific needs, and so is not true in all cases, but developing one mobile version of your site is usually less expensive than creating multiple versions of an app for each major mobile OS. Or in other words, you may get much more mileage out of a mobile site than you could out of a single app.

Sites also benefit because they are easier to fit into many analytics programs. There are a lot of options for tracking user analytics in apps, however if you want to use the same analytics program for your app and your site, your options become very limited. Using a mobile site is one option that allows you to keep your current system in place.

Disclaimers

None of this is meant to completely discount the value of apps, just to emphasize that there is a viable alternative. Apps and widgets definitely have their place and may ultimately work better for your particular business. As highlighted above, apps are generally more customizable than mobile sites, and can take advantage of more of the hardware on a particular device. Apps also allow more creativity, from Augmented Reality to real-time content sharing. And apps are cool. They are talked about in the media, shown in commercials, and spread through social networks.

Ultimately, the choice of a mobile optimized site versus an app depends on many factors from the type of business you operate to how you want to engage your customers. However, even with the current “app obsession,” there may be other mobile technologies that are better suited to your business needs.

One of the best ways to decide is to talk to people familiar with implementing both technologies for businesses. They will have some insights and experience from working on the opposite side of the business, and they may be able to give you the information you need to make a decision or be able to create a technology plan for your business.

Let our talented team of developers put your mind at ease and feel free to check out our experience developing mobile applications on all platforms.

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