Mobile apps and websites

Question

I have wondered this for a long time now,but it came up again when my mother asked me: "Why does facebook open sometimes in the browser if i downloaded the app ?" So i thought is this a technical question and tried to explain her links work,but in the middle of the explanation i wondered..why does facebook even have a website at all? Why is this so confusing to new users? What is the point of adding more confusion-as most people agree the dedicated app experience is usually superior,and the mobile website uses a completely different design!

The question isnt really about facebook in particular,since there are multiple services which have a mobile website in ADDITION to their own application. Most of these apps are supported on most mobile operating systems so saying "compatibility" is not an acceptable answer in most cases.

I would like some insight on how this works in a UX perspective,this is NOT a marketing/design question

Answer 1

It's not really a UX question as much as it is a marketing/business decision.

A mobile (or responsive) web site is a must today. So that's the baseline. A company must have a mobile presence on the web as the web is increasingly being accessed on mobile devices and that trend is not going to go away anytime soon.

The reasons to add a mobile app to the mix are varied. They can include:

• a desire to have a presence in the app stores. This is more to do with marketing
• the CEO really likes apps. This is more to do with vanity.
• there is a need/desired to leverage some of the native features of an app (such as push notifications). This is sometimes a UX decision. Often it's a business/marketing decision.
• there is a need/desire to provide a level of UX that comes with focusing on the native app for a particular program.

And there are many more, of course.

Mom's aside, I don't think there's necessarily confusion for the user when there are both apps and web sites. In fact, I'd say this is a benefit to the user. It simply gives them another option.

However, there are times when having both is a bad business decision due to the bigger picture. I've seen the following:

• A mobile app is created instead of making sure the web site works well on mobile. This forces anyone with a mobile device to download the app. Not a great experience.
• A mobile app is created without ensuring design, development and support resources are increased to handle it. This causes a split where you now have half the team working on the mobile web, the other half on the mobile app and both end up suffering for it.
• The responsive web site begins to be on-par or exceed the feature set of the mobile app. At this point, the mobile app could be seen as a liability as it's funneling users away from the more powerful option.
• The mobile app is a mobile app in name only and is actually a compiled web/hybrid app. While there is nothing inherently wrong with that, I often see it being done as a 'shortcut to the app store' where the only real benefit is for marketing--and the app itself is sub-par.

Answer 2

First of all a website is a web-site, which means it runs in a browser. The reason why web became so popular was because of a single medium that translates everything into a single output called HTML.

Mobile apps like Facebook's came later. They became mainstream after Apple introduced their iPhone in 2007. Since the experience on the small, less powerful, mobile browser was not as good as the one on desktop, people opted for developing apps for their websites. And guess what? They became popular because you could do a lot with native apps.

The reason why people have both apps and websites is because not everyone has a phone or not at all times at least. People want to have access to their email, Facebook, etc. anytime and from anywhere.

That said, I think the question should be wether a website should have an app at all. And the answer is yes at least until HTML5/CSS3 become so powerful that it can be on a par with its app counterparts.

Answer 3

There are many reasons to have a mobile website as well as an app. The main reason being:

No one is going to download an app version of a site they've never used.

Sure Facebook is used by practically everybody, but in fact there are plenty of people that have never used it. It is highly unlikely I am going to go through the effort to download the app just to see what the site is, especially if it's a much lesser known site. Could you imagine doing a google search on your phone and for every site on the results list you had to download their app instead of using their mobile site?

Asside from that there are plenty of reason to keep a site instead of only having an app.

1. There are those that don't know of the app
2. Those under parental lock/restriction that can't download the app
3. Those on work related devices that aren't permitted to download the app
4. Apps that aren't supported on certain devices (not the case in FB but many sites don't make apps for certain devices especially Windows phones).
5. People that need to use browser tools such as screen readers, cookie management, plugins, etc.
6. Phones that don't have enough memory to download an app for each site they want to use.
7. So links from other sites will work on phones. (in some cases links will open the app but not always)