In the attention economy it’s more important than ever to keep your customers engaged. Businesses are fighting for space on customer’s phones which more often than not end up just being “another app just sitting there”, getting deleted, or worse…. a bad review.
"But at least they downloaded and pushed it up the rankings, right?"
Your 15 seconds of fame won't get you the loyal user base you need to grow.
Wrong, here’s what to consider before building an app:
1. Costs
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$ The App Store (Apple) will a 15-30% commission of app, and in-app, sales
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$ Apps require specialised programmers that more often are being outsourced to cheap software houses around the world; you won’t know who’s actually writing your code and the bugs they won’t pay the price for.
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$$ The developers will cost %15-20 yearly just for maintenance
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$$$ Unexpected problems - Software is notoriously hard to budget and complications ALWAYS arise that end up causing delays and increasing the budget
2. Splitting Your User Base
You won’t need to develop one app, but actually 2! Because iPhone (“iOS”) apps are completely different from Android apps.
The developers will have tools to make this faster to manage, but you will still have to manage reviews and user issues from two different communities.
3. App Store Approval
Approval is long because Apple have stringent requirements that must check themselves. Even the UI/UX must be approved by them which might not be the UX you want to create.
The better way…
Web apps (or websites) are device agnostic meaning it doesn’t matter if the user has an iPhone, Android, desktop, or tablet; the app will run exactly the same. Because it’s all about the browser, and Safari/Chrome are pretty much the same. Meaning the developer community is much wider, making development far more efficient.
No Commission: You might pay for Google ads but after that, you keep 100% of your hard-earned revenue
No Approvals: The web is essentially the wild west; anyone can make a website, provide certificate details, and deploy it to the web the same day. Just write a basic terms and conditions and privacy policy to cover yourself, and don’t use analytical cookies until you have a proper privacy policy in place.
“But I like the way phone Apps feel”
That’s because Apple and Android invested heavily into their UX, and most of the software runs on the user’s phone, not a far away server.
We can have website with App-like UX thanks to the invention of “Single-Page Applications”, basically the page never “loads” instead only the necessary parts are loaded without affecting the whole page. This is where I come in.
Most developers are stuck using old tech that wasn’t designed for this purpose from the ground up. I on the other hand stay up-to-date with the latest tools and techniques, because to maintain the illusion of the App-like UX it has to be 100%, just like a magician’s tricks.
If you want to see what how looks and feels. Then please go to my website https://marcojones.dev signup, and fill out my forms, they’ll be like no other website you’ve used before.
Talk soon,
- Marco
