Straw poll re mobile apps

[Greg_M]

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Wozza, post: 268818, member: 117204 wrote:

Agreed, like I said in another post this morning its 2020 and a large number of businesses still do not have a mobile-friendly website.

Unbelievable!!

You’ve hit a bit of a sore point with me there, many web designers think they have it covered by using a responsive design grid, or framework (and often a very bloated theme builder). There’s still a common tendency to design at the ‘desktop view’, probably on a high resolution monitor and rely on the theme or framework of choice to pack it down for the mobile view…it’s usually not a great user experience on mobile.

What also gets missed is the performance requirements needed to be of any use to a mobile user, primarily fast load speeds.

Don’t rely on my opinion it’s also Googles;

https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse

It’s worth a look. The stuff it measures just shows how poor most sites are. And why they don’t convert sales off mobile devices…which seems a little dumb to me considering mobile now dominates the search market.

I don’t think the day is too far away that if you don’t hit some of those benchmarks you’ll get indexed, but nowhere useful in organic search. Google knows the user is mobile and will deliver the ‘fastest’ option that meets the search query imo.

[Wozza]

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Greg_M, post: 268819, member: 38207 wrote:

You’ve hit a bit of a sore point with me there, many web designers think they have it covered by using a responsive design grid, or framework (and often a very bloated theme builder). There’s still a common tendency to design at the ‘desktop view’, probably on a high resolution monitor and rely on the theme or framework of choice to pack it down for the mobile view…it’s usually not a great user experience on mobile.

What also gets missed is the performance requirements needed to be of any use to a mobile user, primarily fast load speeds.

Don’t rely on my opinion it’s also Googles;

https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse

It’s worth a look. The stuff it measures just shows how poor most sites are. And why they don’t convert sales off mobile devices…which seems a little dumb to me considering mobile now dominates the search market.

I don’t think the day is too far away that if you don’t hit some of those benchmarks you’ll get indexed, but nowhere useful in organic search. Google knows the user is mobile and will deliver the ‘fastest’ option that meets the search query imo.

Some of that performance gap could explain in part why the we

Yes its a great tool – I use it quite a lot before we take on any projects, to see any potential website roadblocks or issues. best to know beforehand…

Google is already using mobile first indexing https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-first-indexing

[Greg_M]

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Thanks for the input, a decision has been made…

Partly by [USER=53375]@bb1[/USER] comments “it doesn’t matter what I think” it’s the crowd opinion that does.

And [USER=78928]@Paul – FS Concierge[/USER] “inertia is your friend”. (and the advice on verticals)

I do think the conventional website is a dying breed, so from now on the time is going into;

https://flutter.dev/

Their “web version” is still in beta but I doubt for long. One programming language covering 3 platforms has won me.

Thanks

[Paul – FS Concierge]

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Good luck Greg.

[SeeMySite]

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Greg_M, post: 268758, member: 38207 wrote:

I’m interested to get opinions on how day to day users view using native apps (installed on your phone via your app store of choice) when compared to using websites or web apps.

This is personal opinion, but if you take out the biggies, like Facebook, Gmail etc etc etc…I find that most of them are awful.

I’m only talking about mobile apps that connect to the web for info, data etc. Not stuff that is operating just on the phone itself, like a game maybe.

This has been amplified because I use a Chromebook a lot...for anyone interested a Chromebook can install and run most Android Apps. So I’ve been doing the rounds and using a lot more apps than I would even think of using on a phone.

Most of them are horrible to use, especially when compared to their parallel web counterparts. For instance, I really like SBS on Demand and I like using their website but their app is crap…and I’m finding more as I go.

The reason I’m asking the question has a couple of motivations…ones personal (where my times better spent) the other is to address the commonly asked question…I have a great idea. How much will it cost me to build an App?

I’ve had a serious look at moving towards developing native apps. Mainly because there’s still some advantages in accessing the underlying hardware on a phone (disappearing rapidly)…the big downside is they’re almost impossible to market for small players…easier if you already have a significant web audience.

The web technology now exists to (pretty simple to do compared to coding a native app) that allows a user to install a website/web app on the phone (in under 5 seconds usually) that creates an icon on your home screen (or anywhere else you want to put it). It works offline just fine, and only updates info when there’s a connection…notifications are optional.

There’s no need for ongoing updates and big downloads of data (these drive me nuts on my phone, 4 a day is not uncommon), because there’s nothing on the phone to update, just what’s known as a service worker receiving information from a web server.

Many larger companies are using this model (e.g. Twitter, Alibaba…) but I think there’s plenty of opportunity for small service providers and retailers looking for regular repeat business to benefit, especially in ‘local’ search results…think plumbers, electricians, pizza, coffee etc. And you can’t do that with a native app.

I’ve half answered my own question, but I am interested in opinions if you have one.

End of essay, thanks.

Hi Greg

A really interesting question and thanks for posting the thread. I’ve come to it late, but it was reminding me of the old debate back pre 2000’s of whether the device of choice was going to be a PDA or a mobile phone. (For those not so long in the tooth a PDA is (Personal Digital Assistant) a device that did a lot of the organisational stuff. but wasn’t necessarily connected to a network.

Without getting into the specifics of it I recently went through the whole ‘Native App’ v ‘Web App’ debate or a project I’m involved in. Long story short – just felt that having to jump through hoops to have Android and IOS certification and then uploading those to stores and then version control just were too big negatives for me. Sure there are pluses to running a Native app. Offline capability v a web app being the biggy. But alterations to a web app just flow out, no need for a user to have to update via a store (if required). What did I discover from a customer point of view on Native v Web? They don’t seem to care. Does it do what I want it to do….yup…does it solve a problem for me…yup.

[Greg_M]

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SeeMySite, post: 268845, member: 117167 wrote:

Hi Greg

A really interesting question and thanks for posting the thread. I’ve come to it late, but it was reminding me of the old debate back pre 2000’s of whether the device of choice was going to be a PDA or a mobile phone. (For those not so long in the tooth a PDA is (Personal Digital Assistant) a device that did a lot of the organisational stuff. but wasn’t necessarily connected to a network.

Without getting into the specifics of it I recently went through the whole ‘Native App’ v ‘Web App’ debate or a project I’m involved in. Long story short – just felt that having to jump through hoops to have Android and IOS certification and then uploading those to stores and then version control just were too big negatives for me. Sure there are pluses to running a Native app. Offline capability v a web app being the biggy. But alterations to a web app just flow out, no need for a user to have to update via a store (if required). What did I discover from a customer point of view on Native v Web? They don’t seem to care. Does it do what I want it to do….yup…does it solve a problem for me…yup.

I would have agreed with you in full, up until recently but a big change started when I started using https://firebase.google.com/ for hosting websites. I won’t bore anyone with the tech but it put me in touch with a constant stream of low cost possibilities from Google, and a seamless way to tie into all their API’s and infrastructure (and lot more).

Part of that stream of stuff included Flutter which is written in pure Dart (Google invented Dart and open sourced it)…no more JavaScript pricked my interest initially (no more html or css either). I had a play…then took your view, and put it away.

With full web support coming to Flutter a lot of that has changed for me. Apart from simplifying how stuffs built, it opens up a lot more possibilities for promotion of the native apps if you get any traction. Via Firebase and API’s you can provide a back door into native apps with “deep linking” and pretty much get a native app included in the search index along with the website…if they love the website, it’s a minimal transition to the native app if they want it.

That last bit did get me interested.

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