Mobile App Vs Mobile Website Vs Responsive Website

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Each minute the Internet evolves at lightning speed, and that can be intimidating for small business owners to keep up. For most small business owners, worrying about technological leaps and trends is the least of concerns. Instead, they focus on a traditional approach that has worked thus far.

Although, a traditional outlook makes sense to some degree, mobile marketing is here to stay and slated to grow at a pace that can be daunting for smaller businesses. The only option out of this dilemma is to ramp up online presence to suit the ecosystem. As to the question of ‘how’ – the answer lies between technology of responsive websites, mobile websites and mobile applications.

Responsive Website

A responsive website uses a CSS style sheet that allows the website to look great on any device, whether it is a PC, phone or tablet of different screen sizes, the website will render perfectly. It is usually not a separate website, just a design that works for all screen sizes allowing mobile visitors to access website content optimized for smaller screens.

Mobile Website

A mobile website uses more contemporary front-end technologies like HTML5 or WebKit features without the need for backward compatibility with older browsers. A Mwebsite can be considerably inexpensive than a responsive design that requires a complex rebuild of everything, enabling enhanced user experience at much lower maintenance costs.

Mobile Apps

An app is usually designed to achieve a very precise objective. Whether it is a game or a banking app, or an app to find vegetarian restaurants in a city, they are designed to be interactive and task oriented with allowance for purchases to be made within the app. They aren’t necessary for some businesses, however, can be of great benefit for most.

Responsive Website vs. Mobile Website

Responsive websites cannot be created by simply rearranging the existing elements, especially from complex structures of full websites. Responsive design is much more expensive, it usually requires a complete overhaul of the existing website from the ground up, keeping in mind that attention to user experience is paramount.

On the other hand, if your goals are primarily oriented towards marketing and communications, a Mwebsite makes a practical first step in your mobile strategy as mobile websites have a few inherent benefits over responsive websites, including compatibility and cost-effectiveness.

MWebsites vs. Mobile Apps

Between the choice of mobile website and mobile app, the most appropriate choice depends on your end goals. Logically, it rarely makes sense to launch an app without having a Mwebsite in place. If your goal is offering mobile-friendly content to a wider audience, then a Mwebsite suits the purpose. Whereas, apps are useful when tackling a very specific purpose that cannot be effectively accomplished via a web browser.

Responsive Websites vs. Mobile Apps

this is where it gets tricky. Between the two, you should do both – if you can. In the interest of budgets, many small businesses end up choosing between the two. However, the available modern day tools remove that variable from the equation effectively.

While a responsive website will feature everything with ease of access, the mobile app may have a more specific task to accomplish, and will interact with users in a personalized way that a website just cannot hope to achieve.

For many businesses, harnessing a two-pronged mobile strategy that leverages both mobile site and app for maximum distribution of content is necessary. While the choice between a responsive website and a mobile website can be debated, mobile apps win emphatically over both. Well-designed mobile websites can be an asset for a business, but it still cannot achieve what mobile apps can, especially when it comes to gathering user information. Selecting one over the other should be the last resort, if at all, especially for a business that wishes to survive and thrive in the digital age.

Enhance Your Mobile App User Experience by Following These Tips

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The success of your mobile app is not contingent, but is dependent in a number of factors. The most important factors is the user experience (UX). The user experience is the only difference between successful apps and the ones that fail badly.

In order to deliver the best user experiences to your users, it important for you to analyze user behavior patterns while they use your app. Unless you understand these psychological underpinnings, you won’t be able to build a product that specifically caters to the needs of your customers and meets their expectations. To begin with, you can gather user data and build hypothetical user personas. Today’s modern mobile app demand a lot more from mobile apps to keep their interest and urge them to come back.

Here are a few tips to help enhance your mobile app user experience:

Error free functionality

Perfecting your app before launch is the key. Many app developers fail to thoroughly test the app and regrettably end up launching a faulty product. Statistics show that 90% of the users stop using an app due to poor performance and 86% of the user actually deleted the app if it has a flawed functionality. If your app does not work initially, all other amazing UX features won’t matter. The functionality of your app must help users accomplish their tasks without too much effort – which is the motivation for downloading your app in the first place! So, prioritize your core features and categorize the others as ‘nice-to-have’.

Efficient On-boarding

The on boarding process is important when it comes to ensuring the success of your app. The point is, if the user has trouble with the first few screens of your app, they will likely drop off – with a little hesitation. Hence, providing users with an excellent on boarding experience is the foundation for attracting and retaining users. The aim is to show the value of your app to your customers by demonstrating how they can achieve what they want via your app – quickly and efficiently. If your app has a complex workflow, or hidden functionalities, it’s important that you use progressive on boarding. This reduces the abandonment rates.

Usability

Usability includes the layout of information, design, content and all the other elements that enable users to accomplish their tasks within you app. The idea is to make elements that can be clicked, tapped or swiped – prominent. It’s important that you remain consistent with gestures throughout the app to optimize its usability.

Reduce effort

You need to help users find their way quickly while they browse your app. Integrate search strategies within your app. Provide user with search options and filters to guide them.

Limit user input

User input such as user registration, credit card information while checkout or any other such information needs to be minimized. Entering too much information using the small screen space that is available could be frustrating and can totally mess up the user experience with your app.

Security and trustworthiness

Asking user too many – permissions while installing the app could be overwhelming. Studies show that privacy invading apps are easily deleted by the users. Make sure that you provide transparent permission policies with your app.

Finally, make sure that you design your UI for glance-ability. This means that a quick scan should provide the user with enough information to take a decision – to stay or to go!

Important Guidelines to Choose the Best Mobile App Development Platform

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Over the past few years, mobile application development has progressed rapidly and there are new applications coming into the market every now and then. Since the users of such apps are becoming more demanding, there is a great demand for apps that can serve their purpose the best. With such great opportunity to capture audiences through mobile phones, choosing the right mobile application development platform can help you to make your business a great success.

Today, a number of mobile platforms have come up, but selecting the best one that can satisfy your specific requirements is vital as it will allow you to reach a wider audience base while maintaining and managing the unique needs of your organization.

User experience: A good platform should always offer an optimized user experience on each device. The app should be engaging, delivering the functionality that the users need and designed for performance. So, while choosing a mobile application development platform, be sure that it can enable building an app that can address the unique requirements of your customers and organization that is both current and future.

Flexibility: There are different approaches to build an app, namely the web, native or hybrid. Each approach has its own benefits and limitations. So, select a technology that offers a flexible solution and can harness the benefits that each approach offers and support the entire mobile strategy of your business organization.

Target audience: Another biggest factor that should be considered is your target audience. If your business targets the mass market, then it is better to choose popular platforms such as iOS and Android. Consider mobile app developers who can select the appropriate technology to target most of your users and capture them at the right place and time.

Security concerns: Mobile apps are assuming the roles of critical systems in the enterprise and authentication and security have become the top concerns of app development companies. Your mobile application development company should ensure that the platform provides a robust security and authentication framework. The features include on-device encryption, offline authentication, secured client server communication, access control and many more.

Platform’s future prospects: The future of any mobile platform plays a great role while choosing for app development. Most software incorporate the latest technology into their updates and so you should make sure that your chosen technology will let you cost effectively handle your growing business and provide immediate recovery automatically without any risk or loss of data. It must be backed by support for new environments and allow you to extend your capabilities to meet customer and employees’ needs.

Check easy availability of developer tools and resources: Your selected framework should have the right tools to support the app developers so that they can successfully complete the project. Good resources and tools help them to fix bugs easily and quick reference helps them to develop the project according to the client’s needs.