Most of the first-time founders have this dilemma whether to build a mobile App or website for their business? Ideally, you should be building both mobile Apps and website for your business. While website gives you an online presence, having your mobile app on the users’ phones has a very high brand recall value.Having said that, when you are just starting, you need to take a call on which one to get first in order to get valuable user feedback as well as to start marketing for full-fledged user acquisition. The answer is, it depends on your idea and the stage you are in with your idea.

 

Let’s look into some of the considerations which will help you decide.

When should you consider building a mobile App first ?

  • Does the product you are building essentially needs to track the location of the user, needs to access the camera, contacts, uses the gyroscope, sensors? If you have answered ‘Yes’ to any of the above, you should start working on a mobile app first. Anything which needs built-in device features, which are not exposed to a browser needs to be built in a mobile app.
  • The product needs to be used on the go, will potentially be consumed while users are on the move or at a certain location the user will need to access it multiple times in a day, build a mobile based product first. You can leverage the ubiquity of a mobile device in this case.
  • Your decision to build a mobile app first also depends on the geography that your target customers are in, the penetration that mobile network and devices have. For markets where mobile is the only mode of data consumption, getting an app over a website is wiser. Because your users might not be using laptops or desktops at all.
  • Do you want your users to consume the product offline? Or do the users need to be connected to the internet to avail the services offered by the product? This is one more consideration which might help you take an informed decision. A mobile can easily support offline usage while a website can not.
  • When your product is a game or has lots of user interaction, App is the way to go. High-resolution graphics and animations work smoothly in a mobile app compared to a web browser.

When should you get a Website/Web App for your business?

  • A website is immediately available for both first-time and returning customers. Your customers can access it as soon as they open their web browsers. Mobile Apps need to be installed on the users’ device. So, acquiring first-time visitors is simple and easy on a website when compared to a mobile device. Not only this, a mobile device has limited storage space and your app has to fit into top 20-30 apps that the user needs so that the app does not get uninstalled after first time usage
  • Will you be updating your product very frequently? Are you into content or media publishing business? A website is more suited for products which need frequent changes and updation. As and when changes are made to the product, same can be pushed to users without users having to install the updates.
  • Are you building a product which has various levels of complexities?Bloating all of it in one mobile app should be avoided, because a mobile app’s functional and computational capabilities, though has improved, are still lesser compared to a computer.
  • Is your goal is to generate traffic at first? starting with a website mobile/desktop can help achieve that faster. An SEO driven website can bring more traffic than app through search engine marketing.

In a nutshell, the decision of going with either of these strategies is business driven and depends on the immediate goal with the launch of the product. A mobile app can help drive more user engagement, personalization, and better user experience, but are costlier and difficult to maintain owing to the sheer number and variety of mobile devices available in the market. A website is platform and device agnostic and is cheaper to maintain and build.

There is no clear winner here, it all depends on the business that you are in and the way you want to acquire your customers. Analyze the usage and features that the product has and you would know your answer.