Does your brand needs an app? Or will a mobile-site suffice?

Posted: Jun 02, 2011
Author: WordJack Media

Checked my digg digest this morning and saw a mashable article trending about how to decide if you need a smartphone app. While I didn't necessarily think the article explored all the factors concerned, I thought the subject to be a fantastic question that should be considered and contemplated by web marketers quite carefully.

They spoke about platforms, the markets you're targeting and the relative costs to get started. These are all very relevant questions for internet marketers of bigger brands or even people who run technology development as their product. But in the aerena of web marketing for small businesses, the question becomes a whole lot simpler...."how will your client's engage with you? really?"

This doesn't mean "how do you think they will engage with you" or "how do you wish they would engage with you?". I saw an iphone app health for a health insurance company the other day (advertised on a billboard at a train station - which is another issue, but I'll try not to get sidetracked). But realistically, what is you engagement with a health insurance provider? You would check out all their details when you are looking for a quote (probably comparing them to another company), and then ongoing, you would probably check occasionally if you're waiting for a claim to be reimbursed.

So the question worth asking is: will someone REALLY go to the trouble to download an app if their engagement with your brand is so occasional and so low-involvment? You might argue that there is no real cost in downloading an app (if you're on WIFI or downloading within your monthly 3g limit), but I would argue that there is only space for, say 4 screens of apps on you iphone (before it gets ridiculous), and you need to hold some degree of emotional-real-estate with the user to deserve one of those spots!

I wouldn't even suggest that a local pizza shop could claim enough sway with their regular customers to deserve that sort of placement on their app menu...unless their app was something engaging like "drag & drop your own pizza ingredients onto the moving pizza", then click to get it delivered to your door in 30 min! (I'm sure it exists!)

The final question I'd ask is whether the mobile web/app browsing experience caters to your type of business. I know it's growing so we all want to be there, but I recall from my yesllow pages days that all the mobile apps had their most common search types (entertainment, food, pizza, bars, pub, taxis) and they made up about 90% of search. The reason is obvious! If you are a landscape gardener, or a cabinetmaker, don't expect people to be searching for you in a "need it now" frame of mind....which is a lot of what mobile search is all about.