{"id":792,"date":"2015-10-01T22:40:04","date_gmt":"2015-10-02T05:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/?p=792"},"modified":"2016-06-03T14:05:50","modified_gmt":"2016-06-03T20:35:50","slug":"mobile-apps-are-not-a-web-solution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/mobile-apps-are-not-a-web-solution\/","title":{"rendered":"Mobile Apps Are Not a Web Solution"},"content":{"rendered":"

This came out of an email I typed to my local public library after they kindly informed me that their website doesn\u2019t support iOS Safari and suggested I download their mobile app instead. This response is unacceptable, and here\u2019s why:<\/p>\n

A single-purpose mobile app is about as useful as a unicycle. Sure, you might be able to ride it down the street, but it was never designed to get you much further. Apps for every website has always been a dumb idea because it breaks up the interconnected nature of the web itself. The moment the user needs to click a link to another site, they get bumped out of your app entirely \u2013 creating friction that makes the experience awful for the user and detrimental to their impression of you.<\/p>\n

Back in 2011, every clueless CEO wanted a mobile app (that does nothing a website can\u2019t already do) because they heard it was the latest, hottest thing and wanted to jump on the bandwagon. It was a terrible fad that had its day because it was a terrible idea. Yet here you are, in 2015, telling people, \u201cPlease use our unicycle instead of the bicycle we can\u2019t be bothered to fix. Unicycles are still hip, right? Pleeease try out our unicycle. We lost our bicycle building budget over this!\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The thing is, if you\u2019ve stopped making a reliable bicycle and are trying to push a unicycle on people instead, anyone with a lick of sense is going to shake their head and walk away, because they know a unicycle is not a viable bicycle replacement. And also the only people who ride them are clowns.<\/p>\n

As for those people every unicycle manufacturer managed to push into adoption, through simply being annoying enough the force the \u201csolution\u201d on them, it\u2019s destined to do nothing but collect dust in their garage. Instead, they\u2019ll look at the bicycle you used to support and wish you\u2019d get around to repairing that instead, because at least the bicycle is not a pain to ride. Bicycles are more functional, multipurpose, and ubiquitous. They can go up hills, and be used for more than commuting to clown college.<\/p>\n

Eventually the person you foisted the unicycle on will get the urge to clean out their cluttered garage. Guess what\u2019s going to get turfed: all the single-purpose devices people foisted on them over the years. Out goes the bagel slicer they only used once because it barely cut bagels, let alone anything else. Out goes the Casio synthesizer that could only do a pre-programmed rumba, as far as they could figure out. Out goes the selfie stick they\u2019re ashamed to have ever owned. And out goes your unicycle too.<\/p>\n

As for the bicycle, they might dust it off if only you could make it stop sticking in 3rd gear, but since you didn\u2019t bother fixing it \u2013 desperately hoping everyone would adopt the unicycle instead, it gets kicked to the curb as well. Congrats on losing your users that way. If only things could have been different.<\/p>\n

Oh wait, it can! Fix your website.<\/strong> The web is not going away, and neither is mobile browsing. If you can\u2019t make your website responsive in this day and age, and make it work on every mobile browser (including the one most used on the planet), maybe you should have spent your budget developing that instead throwing money down the toilet on yet another single-purpose proprietary app no one wants nor needs.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t just take it from me: I found a pie chart.<\/a> And numerous articles<\/a> on the subject<\/a> (I could link more but they all say the same thing). Users don\u2019t want mobile apps for everything. If there were an app for every website, that would add up to about a billion apps, all requiring hard-drive space on people\u2019s smartphones, all adding clutter to their screens. Those 30% of people who stated a preference for mobile apps, guess what they\u2019re using: Twitter and Facebook.<\/p>\n

Dear local library, you are not Facebook. You will never be Facebook. Your adoption rate is negligible and your retention rate 1% of that. You will never have the clout or user-base to justify turning your website into an app and trying to lock them into yet another walled garden. Even big dogs like Google are not right to do this, because it\u2019s the absolute antithesis of what the web should be. So ditch the apps, and focus your resources on your website, where everyone can access it.<\/p>\n

As for your alternate suggestion to download a different browser, you don\u2019t get to dictate terms to your users that way. Though I\u2019ve not been active in web development for ten years, the core theory of cross-compatibility has not changed \u2013 in fact it\u2019s more important than ever. Back in the day, Internet Explorer was a pig that didn\u2019t display html properly, but that didn\u2019t give me the excuse to say \u201cscrew EI\u201d and shut out a huge portion of my user-base. I was the one who had to adapt, like it or not. You have a duty to make sure your website runs on every major platform, and in an age of responsive design there\u2019s no excuse not to make it work well.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This came out of an email I typed to my local public library after they kindly informed me that their website doesn\u2019t support iOS Safari and suggested I download their mobile app instead. This response is unacceptable, and here\u2019s why: A single-purpose mobile app is about as useful as a unicycle. Sure, you might be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[24,12],"class_list":["post-792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design","tag-rants","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=792"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":899,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792\/revisions\/899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}