With the digital age continuously advancing, your business may have had the dilemma of choosing between developing an app or building a website. Understandably, the overall goal is to give a better experience for your users—but which option would provide you with the best results?
Picking out the best platform for your business is crucial because the success of launching an app or website has huge returns on investment. In contrast, if you make the wrong choice, you can also end up in debt—possibly crushing your dreams of launching a successful business.
To help you figure out whether you should build an app or develop a website, this guide can give you the proper questions to ask to guide you towards making a more informed choice.
1. Which Can Provide A Better User Experience for Future Customers?
Among all the questions to ask yourself, this is the first and most important to consider. As earlier mentioned, the context of a business should always be in better catering to customers. This is a major component to your decision, as it refers to your immediate client base and how they largely prefer to interact online. It puts into context how they want to inquire or enjoy your products or services. Overall, framing the overall user experience will be the baseline for making this decision.
So first, let’s consider the user experience for a business with an app. In general, it takes advantage of a specialised market, as accessibility is tailored to certain mobile models—such as those with either an Android or IOS. Additionally, it intends to capture the largely mobile-user customer base. While there will be some who would be on a desktop, retrofitting your app to cater to this would not be an immediate priority.
In the case of building a business website, it is more accessible to a majority of online users due to its less strict hardware requirements. This will be the largely acceptable method of catering to desktop users—as websites were formerly directed for their use. While this may also be accessible to mobile users, it won’t be as effective as launching an app, in this regard.
If you really want to make a well-informed decision, ask a professional app and web developer for help, or you can also run a consumer test to capture the legitimate customer opinion.
2. Which Is Faster ?
Aside from user experience, speed and efficiency are also important. As technology helps us process things faster and makes our lives easier, the same speedy experience should also benefit not just your customers, but your staff and yourself as well. There has to be seamless communication and a highly viable means to develop the relationship you have with your customers.
If you consider an app, it can be faster than most websites to run because it is a dedicated, monitored space. However, there are guidelines and specifications to use, such as installation and updates, that may slow down the experience. Another advantage that apps can have is that there is the possibility of using it offline. While some apps require an internet connection, making it usable even without it can capture a wider base of customers.
In terms of running a website, the main consideration would be the internet speeds that your users are surfing on. It is very limited to that, which can also cause them to experience not getting into the site altogether. You have to consider the website traffic and crowding that can likely happen, as well, because a website is more public than an app.
Overall, speed and efficiency can affect how you interact as an online business, which is why it’s crucial to consider this in your decision. You can also use other related services such as VPS to improve the speed rate.
Conclusion
With experience and speed defining the online market, you as a business need to contextualise this in your decision between developing an app or website. Remember, this is your crucial first step so make it count!
Do you want to develop a mobile app or build a website for your business? We can offer you both app development and web design in Cheshire. Connect with us today and have one of our specialists handle your business needs!
