10 Unavoidable Benefits of Mobile Apps over Responsive Websites

The number of smartphone users worldwide has raised to a gigantic figure of 2.7 billion which becomes a great reason for businesses to focus on having an online presence running well on mobile devices. An easier version is called a mobile app. There are two ways you can serve the mobile users-getting a dedicated app designed from a mobile app development company or having a mobi-site i.e. mobile responsive website. To reach a mobi-site, we have to access browsers and even after reaching the website, we have to encounter low performance.

Number of studies by Oracle and MobileSmith have proved that over 60% users prefer mobile apps over mobi-sites to purchase online. Specially, if you hold an ecommerce business, you can lose on major sales for having a low performing and slowly loading mobile presence. 

There is not a single reason why ecommerce mobile apps are better than responsive websites. It is a big list of reasons. In this article, we will make you aware of the few major ones important to consider. 

1. Personalized content: Personalization is defined as presenting a tailor-made content as per user’s preferences and behavior. Mobile apps let users set their preferences and choices exactly so that they can enjoy the stuff which is exclusively made for them. The same reduces the time they have to spend in searching things on your app. On the other hand, if we talk about mobile responsive websites, they cannot be housed in your phone and hence there is a little or no scope of personalization. Mobile apps let you use the features of GPS through which you can show location-based content to the users and also let you send push notifications which serve as a great way of increasing engagement these days. The apps are capable of observing user behaviour and engagement to offer custom recommendations and filter updates depending upon their location in real-time.

2. Apps are faster: Mobile apps are 1.5 times faster than a mobi-site. With mobile apps, data retrieval happens in a matter of seconds as they store data locally on your device. Talking about the mobile responsive website, they have to pull data from serves which is a long process and hence takes time. The speed depends upon the server performance, network ad many other associated things. Apps run on frameworks whereas mobile sites use Javascript to run functions which is why apps are seen offer a seamless experience. 

3. Push notifications: Being an ecommerce business holder, it must be a every week’s work for you to release offers. By means of mobile apps, you can send important updates to the users using Push notifications. Push notifications are received in the notification tray of smartphones regardless user opens the app or not. Such notifications are effective when they are personalized and sent on right time. For example, if you know that a particular user visits your app in the evening then send notification at that time only to increase the conversion rate significantly. Push notifications that are sent at the optimal time for each user have a higher open rate.

4. Offline access: Mobi-sites would run under internet connectively while mobile apps also allow you to access certain features while you are offline. For example, if you want to read your favourite novel online, you would obviously not want any kind of disturbance in between. Mobile apps are seen offer seamless experience in such situations. Moreover, wherever you go, it’s not necessary you find a good network. Mobile apps are a saver in such time since you can access few or most of the features offline as well. 

5. Device features: Mobile app lets you use the features of native device such as GPS, Camera, NFC etc. which is an added advantage that you cannot get from a website. If you are a smartphone owner, you must be aware of importance of such operations for your business. The device features are seen to shorten the time taken by the users to start and perform an action. 

6. Added advantage in SEO: Nowadays, Google also ranks your in-app content and hence you have all the capabilities to modify your content inside your application to help your business with the website SEO. You can also optimize your presence on various app stores to avail good ranks and hence increased installs. In the case of mobile responsive websites, you are simply deprived of added benefits of app store optimization. 

7. User Experience: Think like your users! What do they need? Do they need a slowly loading content tending them to literally hit multiple taps? Obviously not! Mobile apps offer a seamless experience to the users since they have their own dedicated interface made to serve on mobile devices only. With mobile apps, you can offer on click buy, one click sharing and many other exciting features that a mobi-site might not offer. 

8. Designing capabilities: Where mobi-sites just call your website design and fit it as per the screen size, mobile apps are designed keeping in mind an added ease, mobile devices can offer. Mobile applications are designed to support a lot of gestures such as drag, pinch, hold, tap, double tap etc. with each of them performing a particular action which helps you increases user friendliness. You can freely design your mobile app without thinking about the browser elements and caching problems. 

9. Branding: Mobile apps support your branding. It can be always customized as per the company’s current branding. You can virtually change everything easily by just making a few changes to used colours and icons. 

10. Analytics: Mobile apps are seen to offer better analytics than websites. They are capable of increasing business productivity by 20 to 40% by presenting quick charts and reporting tools powered with a lot of customer data. 

Mobile applications are a lot more efficient to handle various aspects of an online business. Hence, it is high time to have one designed.