The Mobile Website: Your App's Back Up Plan?

There are many opinions as to whether a mobile website should be the back up for a mobile app or vice versa. While it is safe to say that with the current direction of the mobile app industry, a company's mobile website may end up taking a backseat to its mobile app. Depending on the company and its industry, this may not always be the case, however, because apps have become so immensely popular, despite what may seem most logical, this pattern may be the preference of mobile users in the future.

Mobile Website Versus Mobile App

In many ways your company's mobile app is just a condensed version of its mobile website, which in turn is the same variation of its full website. For such reason, it is easy to see which options should be back ups for the others. With that said, such a distinction largely depends on your industry as well as the customers using it. Likely the best way to set your predominant mobile offering is to do so with the most common interaction between your company and its customers in mind. This means tailoring both your mobile website and app to the needs of your company and the customers that keep it in business.

What Is Your Company's Back Up?

In the situation that your mobile website needs maintenance, is hacked, or is down for another reason, it is always good to have a back up such as a mobile app. While the two, along with your company's full website, can sort of work interchangeably to back each other up, it is still a good idea to have one as your predominant method of user interaction. This may naturally happen as users begin to be aware of your mobile offerings, however, you should first plan which is your main market offering and which is the backup.

Let’s say, for instance, that you are in charge of the mobile offerings for a wildly successful organic produce farm. Because you are not involved in e-commerce and your online presence is primarily for distributors and their customers to read up on your company, you decide that while you want to offer a mobile app, your mobile website should be your company's predominant offering to mobile device users.

For this case, you can see that the company's mobile website is merely backed up by its mobile app. As another example, let’s say you are a T-shirt company that primarily sells online. For such reason you decide to make your main market offering a mobile app with an attached web store where users can buy your shirts directly. Because your company has such a reliance on e-commerce, you decide to back up your mobile app with a mobile website in case it experiences technical problems. The difference here is that the purpose of an app fits the customers much more than in the previous example.

Conclusion

Making a distinction between your mobile app and mobile website is something that should be done in order to give your customers a primary route to use when buying from your company. In other words, you should solidify one as a main source of mobile interaction for your customers to use, and at the same time, establish which will be the back up in case your company's predominant mobile offering is out of commission.