An App, or a Better Mobile Website?

The install barrier is the whole argument

Getting someone to install an app is a genuine ask: find it, download it, create an account, grant permissions. Each step loses people. A website is one tap from a link.

So the app has to earn that cost. Something must be materially better inside the app than in a browser, and “we would like to be on their home screen” is not it.

The three things that justify an app

1. Repeated use. Weekly or more. Daily is better. Something opened twice a year should be a web page.
2. Offline. Field engineers, warehouses, rural delivery, aircraft. A browser cannot do this well.
3. Device features. Reliable push, background location, camera-heavy workflows, Bluetooth hardware, biometrics.

One of those three should be clearly true. If you are constructing an argument for why it might be, the answer is probably a website.

We turn down roughly half of app enquiries in favour of a mobile website. Almost none of those clients have come back later wishing they had built the app.

What a good mobile website does now

Modern mobile web is considerably more capable than its reputation. Installable to the home screen, works offline with a service worker, sends push notifications on Android and increasingly on iOS, accesses the camera, and takes payments through the browser's own payment sheet.

• No install friction — a link is the whole distribution mechanism
• No app store review, and no rejection risk
• One codebase, and it is the one you already have
• Updates ship instantly rather than waiting for review
• Indexed by search engines, which apps are not

What still genuinely needs an app

• Reliable background work — location tracking, sync while closed
• Full offline with substantial local data
• Bluetooth and hardware integration
• Deep camera control beyond taking a photo
• Store presence, when your customers genuinely search the stores for tools like yours

That last point is real in some sectors and imaginary in most. Check whether people actually search the app stores for what you do before treating discoverability as a benefit.

The cost comparison

The sequence we usually recommend

Build the mobile web experience first. It costs less, reaches everyone immediately and produces evidence: how often do people return, what do they do, would offline actually help?

Then build the app for the users who have proven they want it. Several clients have followed this path, and the app they eventually built was noticeably better than the one they would have built first — because a year of real usage told them what mattered.

Frequently asked questions