Should You Develop a Dedicated Mobile App?

While some businesses out there are still working to wrap their brains around the whole responsive web design thing, others have moved on to the next great debate: should you develop your very own mobile app? Like any good debate, there are pros and cons to each side you should consider.

Go App or Go Home

Other than cavemen who still use flip phones, we don’t know anyone without a decent stack of apps in their library already. Mobile usage studies show that 90 percent of users’ smartphone time is spent within apps, compared to only 10 percent spent on mobile browsing. Even when browsing from your smartphone, Google now lists relevant apps among the search results.

Seems like everyone’s talking about the latest and greatest apps they can’t live without. Actually kind of reminds us of how everyone used to talk about cool new websites a decade or so ago. Without question, apps are the current Big Thing as far as mobile marketing goes, so it makes sense that businesses feel like they’d better hop on the gravy train or risk getting left behind.

Not Every Biz Benefits from Apps

So yes, apps are awesome. But don’t write off mobile browsing just yet. Statistics from Morgan Stanley explain why the 90 percent statistic from a few sentences back is a little misleading: only a dozen or so of the top 50 mobile properties see more traffic from apps compared to mobile browsing. And those names are exactly the heavy hitters you’d expect: YouTube, Google (Maps, Search, and Gmail), Pandora, Instagram, Snapchat and so on.

Apps for social media, mobile messaging and media consumption get the most use, with games coming in a close second. So even though users technically spend their most of mobile time in apps, the apps involved fit a very narrow profile. In other words, if you’re not an addictive game or social media platform that’s steadily cranking out viral memes and/or gifs, your new app probably isn’t going to make a big splash.

If You Build It, Will They Come?

Speaking of making big splashes, let’s talk about what’s involved in accomplishing that next-to-impossible feat. Sure, you can develop a dedicated app, perhaps for a few thousand dollars, but then it becomes just one more thing to market. You’ll need to come up with a separate marketing strategy just for your app, and the competition to get that app noticed is ginormous—and growing.

Now, we don’t want to imply that businesses can’t ever benefit from a dedicated app. Some definitely can and do. But instead of comparing the pros and cons in a vacuum, think about how an app would work within the rest of your online marketing strategy.

Would your new app fill a niche that’s begging to be filled? Is there an aspect of your business that would lend itself particularly well to app use over mobile browsing? If you’re muddy on either one of these answers, we recommend skipping the app for now, and focusing on responsive web design instead.