Does Your Business Actually Need an App?
Only if an app lets your customers or staff do something noticeably better than your website can. For many businesses, a well-built mobile-friendly website is enough. For others, an app becomes central to how customers use the service, how staff work, or the product itself.
It’s easy to see successful businesses with apps and assume building one is the natural next step. It’s more useful to ask what an app would let your customers or staff do better than they can today.
What Are the Benefits of a Mobile App Over a Website?
An app is built for regular use on a phone. Users open it straight from their home screen, stay signed in, and use screens designed for a small display. Apps can also make full use of the phone itself:
- Push notifications
- The camera, including barcode and document scanning
- Location
- Bluetooth and connected devices
- Fingerprint and face sign-in
- Working offline
- Running tasks in the background
Not every app needs these. Where they’re central to what users need to do, an app can offer things that are hard to achieve with a website alone.
Apps aren’t limited to phones, either. Many businesses use specialist hardware, such as Zebra barcode scanners: rugged Android handheld devices with a built-in scanner, designed for warehouses, shops and field teams. A custom app on a Zebra scanner can scan barcodes faster and more reliably than a phone camera, cope with drops and long shifts, and connect straight to your stock or order systems. A website running in a browser can’t make the same use of the hardware.
When Does a Mobile App Make Sense?
How often people use it is the most useful test. If customers deal with you once or twice a year, asking them to download an app adds friction. If they use your service several times a week, having it on their phone is a real convenience.
An app may make sense when:
- Customers use your service regularly
- Users need timely notifications
- It needs to work with poor or no signal
- Device features, such as the camera or location, are important
- Staff need access to business systems away from a desk
- The mobile experience is the product itself
A real-time automotive auction platform is a good example of the first two: dealers bid in live auctions from the forecourt or on the road, so instant updates on their phone are the whole point.
Apps aren’t only for customers. Field engineers, delivery drivers and warehouse teams often need simple access to business systems on the move. A warehouse scanning app, for instance, let staff check stock, find products and pick orders on a Zebra handheld scanner, instead of walking back to a fixed PC.
When Is a Website Enough?
If customers mainly use your website to find information, send the occasional enquiry, read content or make an infrequent purchase, a responsive website will usually give them everything they need.
There’s also a middle ground: a progressive web app (PWA). It’s a website that can be added to the home screen, work partly offline and, on most modern phones, send notifications, without going through the app stores. It suits services people use regularly but that don’t need deep access to the phone’s features.
Does an Ecommerce Business Need a Mobile App?
Usually not at first. Platforms such as Shopify already work well on phones, and for retailers whose customers buy infrequently, that’s enough.
An app becomes worth considering when customers come back often, or when it can offer something the website can’t: loyalty schemes, personalised offers, push notifications or quick repeat ordering. Shopify app builders can produce a template app for a monthly fee, which is a sensible way to test demand before building something custom.
Either way, the app should solve a real customer problem rather than repeat the website in another format.
What Does It Take to Run an App?
An app needs more ongoing care than a website. It has to be:
- Updated as Apple and Google release new versions of iOS and Android
- Tested across a range of devices and screen sizes
- Published through the App Store and Google Play, which review every update and charge developer account fees
- Supported and improved for as long as people use it
Most businesses need both iOS and Android. Cross-platform frameworks such as React Native let one codebase run on both, which keeps the cost of building and maintaining the app down. Most apps also need a backend: the system that stores data and connects the app to your existing software. That’s often as much work as the app itself.
What Should You Decide Before Building an App?
You don’t need a full technical specification, but you should be able to answer:
- Who will use the app, and how often?
- What are the most important things they need to do?
- Why can’t they do those things well today?
- Does it need to connect to your existing business systems?
- Does it need to work on both iOS and Android?
- Who will maintain it after launch?
The answers show whether you need an app at all and what level of investment makes sense. They’re also the first thing a mobile app development team will ask about, because they make up the discovery stage of the app development process. If the app is the product itself, as it often is for a startup, it’s worth planning a smaller first version (MVP) to test with real users before building everything.
Start With the Problem, Not the App
The most successful apps have a clear reason to exist. They make an important task easier, give users something they need, or form part of a wider product or service.
Sometimes the answer is a custom mobile app. Sometimes improving your website or an existing system achieves the same thing with less cost and complexity. Working out which before development starts is the best way to avoid spending money on an app nobody opens.
