The saying goes “there’s an app for that”, and with over 500,000 apps in the Apple Appstore and over 380,000 in the Android Market, there sure are tons of apps that do lots of cool things. But is there an app for increasing your sales? Is there an app that will tell you if you should build your mobile initiative around Apple’s iOS or Google’s Android operating systems? Can you find an app that makes your customers happy?
It would seem with the staggering holiday ecommerce and sales stats from this year’s holiday shopping season would convince retailers and ecommerce sites to get their mobile or app act together, but reality tells another story. Many sites are not optimized for mobile devices, and with mobile purchases accounting for a two-fold increase in online purchase volume from April to December 2011 http://tinyurl.com/c25xpdf , it should be a mandate to marketers to build mobile sites or apps with numbers so big. But as when any new technology comes along some people are either slow or lazy to implement what seems obvious to most marketers or digital experts.
For marketers the real question is should you build an app at all. Sure there’s value in being resident on users mobile phones or tablets, and programming for iOS and Android pose their own unique challenges and constraints. Many apps and games are launched first on iOS for iPhones and iPads, as their operating systems are upgraded at the same time via Apple, while Android is fragmented dramatically across device manufacturers. There is consistency across Apple screen and resolution sizes for user interface design, while Android phones come in several screen sizes for different manufacturers, models, and wireless carriers. Additionally, While a mobile app built specifically for a particular devices operating system (iOS App, Android App, Blackberry App etc) does put the shopping experience in the mobile users hand, there is a substantial cost towards producing multiple applications while still being confined to OS specific mobile devices.
But for ecommerce sites, apps aren’t where its at – its online sites optimized in mobile web browsers. With mobile shopping at record levels this past holiday buying season, most people will comparison shop online using search tools right on their phones. Having an optimized site for the smaller and varied screen sizes of cell phones and tablets can ensure a pleasant and intuitive shopping experience for prospective customers. Users don’t want aggravating experiences where they have to zoom in on pages to read, click, or navigate a site to find what they are looking for. Clean, simplified design always has a positive, albeit non-negative impression, on site visitors which will affect their purchasing decisions.
Creating a mobile-optimized web presence can be a logical common denominator across the mobile demographic. Detecting a smaller-screened device is an easy capability for sites. Serving up a user interface tailored for the smaller device, on detection, will provide the user with a familiar app-like experience and be an efficient means for retailers to hit their mobile demographic in a far more efficient (and production budget friendly) manner.
And beyond just mobile web site design, sites can offer for users to place a icon on a mobile desktop or bookmark. These are simple ways to prompt the user to bring your site into their mobile ecosystem without forcing them into appstore searches and downloads, or additional programming expertise to build apps most users only use a few times.
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Good read Garrett, a recent Mashable article also calls this to light:
http://mashable.com/2012/01/17/branded-apps-infographic/
I think mobile apps have been a convenient excuse for many to hop onto a trend as well as enter the mobile space. But as you pointed out there are more than a half a million mobile apps within Apple’s App Store right now with more on the way. Plain and simple App Stores are not ideal for distribution – the web it however. Which is why hopefully you will see more people invest in HTML5 and cross platform compatible sites. Developing Apps for every SDK and its iterations is going to be a costly nightmare for folks long term….
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