Editorial Articles

Should marketers focus their mobile strategies around mobile applications or mobile sites? Given the number of mobile applications developed for smartphones and the popularity of mobile web, it remains difficult to decide what to do.

Two years ago, I was asked whether the iPhone app store was a target technology for my company and I answered very clearly “No”. Two years on and we have launched more than a dozen apps with our most recent application now on more than a quarter of all the UK’s iPhone devices and regularly getting more than 100k daily visitors.

After over a decade in the business, I can still be proved wrong. There have been many new waves on innovation to break over mobile in the past 10 years, so what is so different about this one? Since the beginning of text-based mobile services, the biggest challenge has always been complexity - both in terms of complexity for the consumer and complexity for the businesses trying to exploit the mobile channel.

The drive towards apps by iPhone, Blackberry, Android and Samsung to name but a few handset-makers has been motivated as much as anything, by a desire to make the consumption of content over mobile as easy as possible. It has certainly worked for the device manufacturers in helping ship more hardware. But has it worked for the content owners and brands who have invested heavily in mobile apps?

As mobile app stores are pretty much universal now for every major maker of mobile handsets, there is always an app option regardless of which handset you think your consumer may be most likely to use. So do you use this option or not?

The issues you need to consider are twofold:

1) Do I need to use an application because I cannot do the things I want my mobile service to do without an app e.g. functionality not possible in a browser?
2) Do I want to use an app store because I think there will be increased traffic from the app store which I could not get by simply launching a mobile site?

Let’s take each one in turn. Firstly, app vs. browsers. There is no question that both technically and from a design perspective, apps wins over browsers.

However, many services on the app stores could just as easily have been produced for access via a mobile browser. So why did these companies go to the expense of creating an app instead (or as well)? This leads us to the second point: Traffic. There is also no doubt that, for the time-being at least, putting an app onto the iPhone app store for example will lead to more rapid discovery than would be the case if you released it as a browser-based service.

So it seems pretty clear then, apps win hands down. You can reach all device groups, provide a great user experience and also reach better initial traffic volumes as a result of the ease of discoverability. So what about the cost implications? Apps cost money and the four major app stores work in a technically completely different way, so not much of the tech from one app can be used in the next. Calculating your Return on Investment is an important part of the business decision about whether to app or not to app. In general, I can advise that in my experience, apps consistently outperform expectations. But don’t take my word for it. Try something simple in the first instance and then upgrade it and invest more in it later once you see it working.

There has never been a better time to app!

Christian Harris
CEO of Gorillabox
www.gorillabox.net
http://www.youtube.com/gorillaboxmobile