We’re not just living in a digital world, we’re living in a mobile world. Sometimes it isn’t enough to have a website, you need a mobile app. It has a lot of benefits. So when a brand is deciding on the choice between mobile apps and websites, it all depends on their cost, usability, required features, and the audience they serve.
VWO gave a list of 10 benefits to having a mobile app over just having a mobile-friendly website. Let’s get into ‘em:
- Better personalization: Apps make it easy to treat users with a personalized experience. Users can also set preferences in-app, customizing their experience from the start. Don’t forget about the amazing trackability for UX apps offer.
- Easy notifications: Push and in-app notifications can be instant, interactive, and more relevant to users.
- Access to mobile device features: Mobile apps, being on mobile devices an all, can utilize features like camera, contacts, GPS, phone calls, accelerometer, compass, etc. While some mobile websites can as well, apps have fewer technical constraints.
- Use offline: While most features would likely still require internet connectivity, apps can offer basic content and functionality to users while offline.
- Design freedom: Apps can be designed with more functions, based on device gestures as opposed to websites depending on browser navigation.
- New branding experience: Companies can use apps to experiment with new looks or transition into a brand style for themselves with a more controlled platform.
- Users spend more time on apps: In time spent on connected devices, mobile users spend 86% of their time on apps and 14% of the time on websites. Note: This includes gaming/social as well.
- New stream of conversions: Apps can be great to push users down the conversion funnel in a much more targeted manner.
- Brand presence: Your branding or logo is present on someone’s device any time they open it. Uh, winning!
- Apps can work faster: Apps usually store their data locally on devices rather than use web servers. Meaning data retrieval happens swiftly and well-designed apps function better than a site overall.
If you can’t choose between both a mobile website and a mobile app, maybe this list helped you see the case for apps. See all the deets at VWO’s post.
