Apps vs. mobile sites
We're quite often asked "do Noisegate make apps?" Well, yes, we do. But is an app really what you need?
Apps, be they for iPhone, Android, Blackberry or anything else, can be extremely useful tools for marketing and delivering products and services, and lots of fun to work on and use. But they aren't right for everyone, and I'd always rather offer the solution that's most likely to achieve the desired outcome, even if that means a smaller or less exciting job for us. So here's a brief summary of some of the advantages and disadvantages of mobile apps:
| Mobile apps (iPhone / Android / etc.) | |
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Often work well without mobile reception | Relatively expensive to develop |
| Easy to charge for and make money from by selling through the App Store, Google Play, etc. | Only work on one platform, e.g. iPhone, so unless all of your customers use the same type of device you'll need an app for each platform |
| Can use the device's hardware, e.g. camera | Can be difficult or costly to amend content and layout |
| Delivering the app through a store creates a new marketing opportunity | Can take a relatively long time to develop |
| Can deliver a really slick user experience making use of a phone's touch interface | |
| Apps are fashionable, and can be useful in reaching a specific demographic | |
So what's the alternative? Well, if the point of an app is to offer content in a format that really suits mobile devices, how about a mobile-optimised website?
| Mobile-optimised website | |
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Works on all types of device | Often only work with mobile reception or wifi (though not always!) |
| Relatively cheap to develop – a custom mobile site that's completely separate from a firm's main website is often half the cost of an app | Difficult to sell, although like any website it's possible to restrict access to paid-up members |
| Can be created and launched quickly | Difficult to use the niceties of a phone's touch interface, like swiping to move from one image to the next |
| Easy to update – they work really well with content management systems | |
A lot of the decision is likely to come down to budget. If it's more important to you to deliver a great user experience than to save money then an iPhone app and an Android app might well be ideal, and we'd love to help. If think mobile might present an opportunity to you but are on a limited budget, or perhaps want to test the water before leaping in, give us a call and we'll help you to explore all of the options and work out what's most likely to deliver for your business.
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