The 21st century signifies the era of complete mobility. Most businesses have already realized this through their market research and analysis.
They have understood that a major portion of their clients/customers spend a bulk of their time and resources on the mobile internet.
So naturally, if they want to increase their customer reach, they have to get to those places where a bulk of their customers are. Thus, a mobile marketing venture crops up and becomes an integral part of the necessity rather than the luxury.
For doing mobile marketing, you’re expected to have an app at the very least. You might of course say that a mobile site optimized specifically for mobile users should do the trick but no, it doesn’t. Certain studies do show that mobile users do prefer apps over the conventional mobile sites.
In fact, mobile apps have triumphed over the mobile internet comfortable on basis of several reasons. Let’s go through them without further ado.
Mobile apps offer better personalization options than the mobile internet
Personalization is all about providing users with tailor made content on basis of their interests, geographical locations and usage behaviors.
There’s something that you need to know about content “personalization.” Content personalization is absolutely the key in making mobile experience delightful and satisfactory. Hence, you must strive hard to inculcate this feature in your mobile marketing venture to make your customers happy.
Your content personalization feature also plays a big role in converting leads to customers. So naturally, an app becomes your best bet to pursue this trick.
The “on-screen notifications” ease
Most business channels used the email channels to market their products/services or to make them aware of the new changes or the new introductions that they have made on their respective platforms. This has created a few issues that come in the form of spam.
Such issues have dropped the appeal of emails a lot when compared to the other channels of digital marketing. There’s a substantial drop in click rates when emails are concerned.
App notifications come in as a savior. App notifications usually appear in 2 forms that are:
- In-app notifications,
- Push notifications.
Both of these are effective enough to connect with users in a more convenient way.
Mobile apps may work on an offline environment
This one’s one of the primary difference between the mobile apps and the conventional mobile websites.
Most apps have the capability to function in an offline environment at least up to a certain extent. They do require internet connectivity for full functionality buy they can still offer their basic functionality and content in an offline environment.
A simple example should clear this up:
Many bank apps (official) provide an option to view the bank statement in an offline mode. This feature might not sound too extraordinary but imagine a scenario where you have to take a peek at a certain transaction ID that you’ve made in the past and you don’t have any internet to get on to. Then what?
That offline statement generator will definitely come in handy in such situations.
Mobile apps give you the freedom to design its looks and functionality
Mobile sites rely a lot on web browsers for performing even the basic functionalities. Such things depend on various browsers such as the address bar, the back button, the refresh button etc.
You would not face such restrictions with mobile apps.
A mobile application is usually designed with a variety of complex functionalities based on advanced and intricate gestures such as swipe, tap, hold, drag etc. You have the freedom to do anything you want, however you want.
With complete freedom, come great innovation opportunities. How you are going to channelize such opportunities into something worthwhile depends completely on you.
Mobile apps help to build up your business’ brand value
Every business wants to build up a credible brand value. If you want to build a huge customer base, a credible brand value is a must.
A mobile app plays its part in building up your brand value. You’ll definitely get yourself a fair share of loyal fans from the app stores.
Along with that it helps to build trust among your customers. Thus many of them would definitely come back to your again and again for further purchases.
How to give an app-like feel to your mobile website
Yes, it is possible to give an app-like feel even with a mobile website. Below are a few tips shared by our expert Greenville web designers.
Have momentum scrolling
Most web developers find it difficult to create scrollable containers that are both responsive as well as fast. But iOS and Android makes it easy for developers to do so by using the overflow-scrolling feature/
Make those buttons more responsive
Often those buttons on a mobile website provide a negative app experience. Most developers tend to leave the default state of hyperlinks and touch buttons unaltered. This results in the website requiring more time to respond to the user’s touch.
Use hardware- accelerated animations
The animation of your website affects the mobile responsiveness. Most native apps are created to use the device’s in-built graphic acceleration feature. Websites, on the other hand, still use JavaScript-based animations that make them slower.
The latest mobile browsers allow developers to use hardware-accelerated CSS3 animations. This can easily allow developers to add animations and deliver an app-like experience to users.
Final word
Mobile apps are always preferred over mobile websites because of their looks, accessibility and browsing speed. Studies have actually shown that mobile users do spend almost 86% of their time on mobile apps in comparison to that of mobile websites.
So my suggestion will be to not miss out on the trend. Get on the bandwagon. Get your business a presence on the app store or redesign your entire mobile website to deliver an app-like experience and reap the rewards that’s going to follow over time. Good luck!
