Starting in July of 2008 through present-day 2014, technology has seen the rise and overtaking of mobile apps. Since 2008, there’s been:

  • Over 1,100,000 apps were submitted to Apple’s app store, 575,000 of which are native to iPad

  • Another million apps have joined the party from Android and with over 175,000 apps from the Windows Store

This app fiesta shows no signs of slowing down. Every day we use apps that let us control the world around us. As we update our status on Twitter, order pizza that’s delivered right to our door, and use our favorite filter on our latest photos, the possibilities are truly endless. These apps are entertaining and keep us connected to our favorite things but the real question here is, does my business need one?

Does your business need an app or a responsive website?

To give you some insight into

the dilemma that many businesses face, I’ll tell you about one of my previous jobs and the dilemma we faced when deciding to invest in an app or a new responsive website. The store was a local mom-and-pop retail store where I worked a few years back, sometime around 2008. It was right in the boom of what I call the wild app craze, where anyone and everyone wanted an app.

Talk started around our office about getting an app ourselves, but I wasn’t crazy about it. We brainstormed ideas ranging from a game, to profiling local athletes and even checking rewards points of our loyal patrons. All of these would have been awesome apps, but I felt that people would just download it, run it a few times and end up deleting it. I didn’t believe the app would accomplish more than a mobile website is capable of, for a local shop like ours.

Our app wouldn’t use any native features or functions that pertained to the phone, and I wasn’t confident that the work going into developing the app would convert into retaining customers or obtaining new ones. With that, we never went through the app development process and instead chose to focus on the website, making it responsive and more interactive for users.

It’s vital to understand that you won’t hurt your business by having an app, we aren’t trying to persuade you that apps are bad. We just want to help you reach the right conclusion in determining if you need an app for your business. With that, let us help you answer the big question of “do I really need an app for my business?”

The first thing you need to ask yourself is, what are my goals?

You’re absolutely going to earn yourself cool points when you say, “check us out on the app store!” But there’s more to it than looking cool. Many businesses have needs for an app as it helps bridge the gap between them and their business goals. The mobile ordering app for Pizza Hut speeds up the process which helps get more orders, Best Buy’s app lets users shop a variety of products from the comfort of anywhere, and the mobile app for Home Depot has a cool feature that locates the aisle number of the product(s) that a user is searching for which ultimately helps get more products into customers hands.

Each one of these apps improves the user experience and keeps them connected with the business. The big picture here is that the apps contribute to the overall business objective. If you don’t have an objective, then an app is essentially a waste of time and resources. Once you’ve determined what your goals are, you can ask yourself the next question.

Would an app give you better results than a responsive (mobile-friendly) website?

Responsive web design and development is continuously evolving. We get a lot of calls at Idea asking if we can create native mobile apps, but when we ask them what they want the app to do, the wishlist of features is typically what a mobile website does. Simply put, it’s counterproductive to find ios developers, android developers, and windows phone developers to build an app, if we can achieve the same results through a mobile website built by our in-house team.

Here’s an example of a client who wanted an app and ended up choosing to build a responsive website that helped them better achieve their goals.

Protein2o sells the only protein water on the market with Hydrolean protein. Their company goal is to promote healthy lifestyles and to provide products that keep people healthy while seamlessly fitting into their day-to-day lives.

Protein2o wanted the ability to calculate protein needs on a person-by-person basis with an online calculator. Not only were we able to design and develop this feature for the desktop version of their site, but we were able to scale it down for mobile devices and use the swipe capability to make it appear as its very own app.

Although it’s mixed into the homepage, the protein calculator could have been separated into its own page. That would have made it more elaborate but our client chose to keep it basic. In the end, they chose a responsive website over an app and got all the features they had wanted. Check out all the Protein2o responsive web design features here.

This is only one of many examples of how a mobile website can be a better fit than an app for your company. This doesn’t mean that mobile apps don’t have uses in many situations, but that often times they are a comparable and logical alternative to investing in an app. People are exposed to websites more than apps so if you’re able to achieve your goals with a mobile website, responsive web design may be the better option for your business.

If you need professional marketing assistance in determining whether an app or a mobile responsive website is right for you, Idea Marketing Group can help.