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We are in a very exciting time for the web. Smartphones and tablets may not be new but proliferation of these devices has grown significantly in Australia of late. Businesses want to capitalise on the potential exposure they can get from a slick native smartphone app and often feel that it is a must have to create a presence in the mobile space and foster mobile browsing habits in their users. Sometimes, the impact business hope for does not always materialise.
When conducting testing for our Clients, we sometimes find participants are less enthusiastic about the interface being tested than our Clients expect. This tends to be rooted in the simple fact that the expected context for use is just not realistic for the participant.
There are options beyond the native app which should be considered. Evaluating these options, in conjunction with having understood your users and the way they would like to interact with you, will save you time and money and ensure a better user experience in the long run.
Considering your options
The first thing to note is that when people say ‘App’ they usually mean the type that they download from an online store such as Apple’s app store. This is usually what the general public think of as an app and is often what businesses implement when they want to facilitate use of their content on mobile devices regardless of how their user expect to access their content. There is no question that apps have changed the way that people find and consume information but in our opinion this approach does not always garner the best user experience. We are not suggesting that native apps do not provide a quality experience (like everything else, quality is all about the implementation) but that they are not always the best way to facilitate users in interacting with businesses in the mobile context. If users need to access your content infrequently, they are unlikely to search an app store to find and install an app. This can impact discover-ability of an app and could mean the hard work you’ve done will go to waste.
So what are the alternatives to Native Apps? Mobile optimised websites are usually the simplest way to ensure that mobile device users are catered for. They are websites that are optimised to display on smartphone or tablet screens and for touch interaction. An example of a mobile optimised website is the Sydney Morning herald mobile website (m.smh.com.au). While this site is not brimming with features and functionality, it works well at delivering content to a mobile device.
Web apps are an emerging technology in the mobile space. Web apps are delivered through a mobile device’s browser and so don’t require installation and are cross platform. Web apps allow the developer to provide a more rich experience than is possible with mobile optimised websites and these apps often emulate the functionality of a native app (such as allowing offline access to content). Amazon’s kindle cloud reader web app is a great example of how web apps can provide a rich and usable experience that sidesteps the requirement to install via an app store.
The financial and technical reasons for choosing any one of these approaches are many, however, users are not concerned with how you do it just with whether it makes sense to them.
Mobile Context
The mobile context is far more unpredictable and diverse than the context in which websites were accessed in the past and this means that the assumptions for how people use content can no longer be relied upon. There are things that we can assume about the average computer user, that they are sitting down, they are generally indoors, they access content via a web browser, that do not hold when we think of users who have a smartphone with them at every moment of their day. The smartphone user may be on the street, in a bar, on a bus or in the queue at a coffee shop when the need to interact with an online business and this context will be a big factor in which technology is most appropriate to facilitate this interaction. Something else that we can no longer assume is that the use of a business’s content on mobile devices is to supplement or support use on more traditional devices or in more traditional settings.
Because mapping when, where and how your users will interact with you is so difficult, we feel that researching this interaction is vital when deciding how to facilitate this interaction. There is no substitute for understanding what your users need to do, when they need to do it and how they expect the business to allow them to do it. Some businesses are in the enviable position to implement all approaches and cater to all needs, however, most will have to make a decision on which to implement, at least in the short term.
While the best approach will required research and careful planning, the following guidelines may be useful in mapping the context in which a particular implementation option suits participants.
Native apps
- Native apps require installation, and as such they should be targeted at users who would need to use them more than once
- Should be designed with the intent of engaging the user in a longer interaction
- Where the desired experience needs to utilise the inbuilt features of the phone to improve functionality and enrich the experience
Web App
- Where integration with the phone’s inbuilt features is not necessary, web apps can provide a very similar experience to a native app
- Web apps can be managed centrally and outside of an app store and so updates and improvements to the interface can be made quickly and cheaply
- No installation required and so use in situations where information is needed quickly is facilitated
- Discoverable in search. If your users are likely to search for you when they are out and about, then web apps allow you to provide the experience you want to without directing the user to install an app from your traditional website
Mobile optimised website
- Simple to use and if implemented correctly provide a great means for users to access information on the go and with minimum effort on the user’s part
- If use is likely to be sporadic mobile sites are cost effective in facilitating occasional use without damaging perceptions of the business by providing a poor experience