Blog
Mobile site or mobile app?
Many people ask us, should we build a mobile website or an app? We generally suggest that clients build a mobile site first, unless there are compelling reasons to have an app.
Mobile site advantages:
- Build it once and deploy to all devices (reach large audiences quickly)
- Costs a lot less money
- Backward compatibility is less complex
- Design revisions are easy and don't require installing updates
- Audience penetration doesn't depend on the success of particular devices
- No Apple approval process
Think about creating an app(s) if you:
- need to store data locally when a connection to the web is not available
- require seamless GPS integration
- need seamless integration of audio and video
- are delivering products such as games
- want a slicker look and feel
- can productively make use of a wider variety of controls built in tothe device
- have a board member who just purchased an iPhone
To see an example of a mobile site with quite a bit of functionality that looks and functions well, and was created on a limited budget, take a look at our Children's Memorial site, http://bit.ly/bUWwLi.