App or Mobile Optimized Website, That is the Question

Mobile App	Mobile Optimized Website	Mobile Website

Let me ask you, if you're on a smartphone, what version would you like to see most, an mobile website, a mobile optimized site or as an app?  I'm guessing your like many of us and your choice would be to pass on enlarging the screen to make the mobile optimized site functional.  You would much rather simplify the site down to only care about the main features.

The truth of the matter is, most users have tiny screens to view this information so a clean mobile app would be the way to go.  We won't even bring up eyesight and other variables that may make the experience worse.  But before we pronounce the mobile app the winner let's look at a few other variables.

Cost.  There's cost associated with both so let's compare.  Creating a mobile optimized website is typically done when building your normal website so it may be buried into the costs of your development.  However we'll say for our scenario that it may cost about $30,000 to build the mobile site.

A mobile app on the other hand typically costs about the same ($30,000)...for one smartphone platform.  You see, you'll need functionality on several different platforms; iPhone, Blackberry, Android and others if you want compatibility everywhere.  So now we're going to have to add another $60,000+ to your total, running you about $90,000 in the hole.

Now that we have our financials in order, let's look at how much traffic can be expected with each option.  If we take the 91.4 million smartphone users in the US provided by ComScore in 2011, each of these users are able to view your mobile optimized site.  However, iPhones make up only 28.7% of the market share, while Android phones make up 46.9%.  And Blackberry rounds out another 16.6%.  So unless you build all 3 apps, you're not going to receive nearly the same amount of potential traffic as your basic old mobile optimized website.

Then you have to think how many users will look for an app to download and download it rather than just view the website as it is?  Only a percentage of those will actually download the app.

That still does not mean you should hold off on building out apps, but you do have to weigh your options clearly.  In some cases, depending on the functionality of the app you may want to build an app.  If it improves the user experience enough or increases sales due to simplicity on the smartphone, then by all means the value could be there.  Just consider all the options first.