Mobile apps swept every sector and industry, and for many businesses, the ultimate way to establish a digital footprint is to have their mobile apps. Well, apps are invincible digital branding tools for any business, and there can be no doubt about that. But can apps replace the importance of the web? No, it is a wild nightmare to think of such a proposition.
Websites are still at the frontline of a digital branding exercise, content marketing, and all the exercises to help a brand reach its audience. Mobile apps are still only for a more loyal audience of a brand, and websites are for the larger audience.
Let us explain some of the reasons for websites to hold a critical place in the digital presence of business brands despite mobile apps’ dominance.
PWA for Fusing Web with the Native App Experience
In recent times Progressive Web Apps (PWA) have become a robust web technology to replace mobile apps. PWAs are accelerated websites with more native apps like the look, feel performance, and ease of use.
Built by using tried and tested web technologies such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, Angular, and other technologies, PWAs offer an app like accessibility from Home Screen, interactions with push notifications, lightning-fast loading time, and offline access.
With the emergence of PWAs, many businesses are preferring it over native mobile apps. Many app developers are fast embracing PWAs to cater to small business customers and startups. A mobile app development company in India will always embrace a popular technology that startups embrace as an alternative to mobile apps.
Here are the advantages of PWAs over mobile apps.
- PWAs are accessible through any browser on any device and offer ultimate accessibility and compatibility across all OS systems and device platforms.
- It involves lower development costs just as a regular mobile website while delivering an app-like user experience.
- Without downloading, you can access a PWA through a browser while you can save it on the Home Screen and access it anytime.
- Thanks to local device caching, it offers offline access to content and lightning-fast loading time.
- Despite being just websites, PWAs, just like mobile apps, can send push notifications to the users.
- Lastly being websites, it is open to search engine ranking, and thanks to great user experience, they provide considerable SEO benefits to content marketers.
Mobile Web for Enhanced User Experience
Let us admit mobile web is now free from most traditional constraints and user experience shortfalls generally associated with the web. While the mobile web is still accessed through browsers, they are designed to offer a mobile device optimized user interface and user experience.
Apart from maintaining a highly mobile optimized look and feel, the mobile web can interact with the mobile device features more easily. At first look, most of the time, a mobile web cannot be differentiated from a mobile app quickly. Let’s have a look at the key factors that go in favor of the mobile web.
- Compatibility Across all Platforms and Devices: A website ensures compatibility across multiple platforms and devices without undermining the user experience. Apart from maintaining the responsive device optimized design layout and other design elements, a mobile website accommodates typical interactions with the respective platform.
- Mobile-Specific Features: Mobile web also enhances the user experience across all kinds of mobile devices irrespective of mobile platforms by accommodating mobile-specific features and interactions such as QR code scanning, mobile wallet payment, text messaging, etc.
- Broader Outreach: Thanks to the compatibility across multiple devices and OS platforms, the mobile web enjoys unparalleled outreach compared to the mobile apps. Mobile web without remaining accessible through the mobile browsers can connect to larger audiences.
- Better Content Marketing: Mobile web is a more powerful tool for content marketing. The leading search engine algorithms like Google emphatically declare the priority for mobile websites for easier accessibility, performance, and ease of use. Naturally, the mobile web enjoys a higher edge in content marketing than the mobile apps.
- Support and Maintenance: Lastly, for most small businesses and startups, the mobile web comes as the most budget-friendly digital avenue as they cannot afford high-budget mobile app projects. Mobile websites are less expensive for upgrading and updating, and low maintenance cost is a key impetus for businesses to prioritize the mobile web.
People are Choosy About Apps
Websites are still an irreplaceable part of any brand’s digital strategy just because the wider audience gets to know about a brand and primarily interacts through the web. Only when they become loyal to a brand can they devise to download the app to stay in constant touch.
Most users are selective about apps just because there are too many of them, and they cannot download apps from every business entity they interact with. On the other hand, mobile apps consume considerable device memory and involve time-consuming download action.
Building Apps is Expensive
Finally, a positive factor that always keeps the web in an advantageous position over the apps is the higher cost of app development. Native mobile apps are several times more expensive than the web in terms of development cost and maintenance cost.
Mobile app projects worldwide involve huge sums of investment depending on the project complexity, unique and innovative features, user experience attributes, and the size of the projects. This is exactly where website development enjoys a clear edge because of the standardized skills, a larger pool of talented developers, and relatively easier development challenges.
Conclusion
Please don’t consider it as a rivalry between mobile apps and the web. Both are equally important and invincible parts of the digital strategy of brands all over the globe. While the web serves as the best starting point for shaping the digital presence, mobile apps definitely come as a better platform for loyal users and customers.
Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash