Should I develop an app?

Whether you’re planning your site, or it’s already up and running, it may have crossed your mind that you might need a mobile app. But would it actually benefit your business?

It’s a question surprisingly left unconsidered by a large proportion of brands and can lead to a great deal of wasted time and resources.

Apps are useful for a host of reasons but they’re also non-essential in many cases. Pouring effort and money into something you might not really need and something that perhaps won’t even be published - it does happen - is something you want to avoid. 

This isn’t to say we’re proposing the idea that mobile-friendly web presences aren’t of the utmost importance. Making sure your brand and your business is mobile-friendly is crucial. According to Tech Jury, over half of internet usage is carried out on mobile phones. With this in mind, it would be a mistake to discount any options regarding these devices and potential for growth. However, making sure your brand is mobile-friendly doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with apps. 

As long as you have a ‘mobile-friendly’ website that reflects the effort put into your desktop-view website, there’s no need to worry. Some brands and companies are less invested in making sure their mobile-view is as well-rounded and accessible as their desktop site. If your site isn’t optimised for mobile users then you’re going to lose out on a lot and so are your users. Additionally, if you put as much effort as possible into your mobile-view site then this, in most cases, will eliminate the need for an app altogether. 

As mentioned earlier, there is also the chance that your app might not get past the development stage. All too many apps have been finished and developers have found that their hard work, time and money had gone to waste because the app wasn’t published. Apple has a policy that an app needs to offer something different, something that a website doesn’t or can’t offer. This means that your app would need to offer something totally new, you can’t just have it for the sake of it. 

Something you have to ask is: “What could my business/brand get out of an app and what could our users get out of an app?” If the answer to that question is that there’s nothing an app could provide that a website couldn’t, then that should tell you something.

If you have any questions about whether an app is right for you then you can always contact us, we’d be happy to talk it over with you.