Do You Need a Mobile App, or Is a Website Enough?

We build apps, so it may sound odd to say this. But an app that nobody opens is the most expensive way to find out you did not need one.

Six questions to decide

Answer these honestly. The more "yes" answers, the stronger the case for an app.

1. Will customers use it every week or more? An app lives on someone's phone, so it needs a reason to be opened. A daily or weekly task (ordering food, tracking a delivery, a loyalty scheme, a school app for parents) is a good reason. A service someone uses twice a year is not.
2. Does it need something a website cannot do well? Push notifications, working offline, using the camera or the phone's location in a serious way, and staying signed in are the usual ones.
3. Is the job doing something, not finding something? People find you on Google and read your details on a website. They order, book, track and pay in an app.
4. Will enough people install it? A customer has to find the app, download it, wait, open it and sign up. Each step loses people, and phones with little free space lose more. Ask how many of your customers you expect to persuade to do all that.
5. Can you look after it? An app is not finished when it launches. Phones get updates, store rules change, bugs appear and customers ask for changes. Google Play and Apple both charge for developer accounts, and you should plan for the upkeep as well as the build.
6. Could the same result come from a website or WhatsApp with fewer steps? If yes, that is where to start.

What to try first

Work up this ladder, and stop when the job is done.

1. A complete Google Business Profile and WhatsApp. Customers find you, tap to chat and book. It costs almost nothing. Our WhatsApp booking guide shows the steps.
2. A fast, mobile-friendly website. A page for each service, tap-to-call and WhatsApp buttons, a short form. See what a website costs in Mysuru.
3. A website that behaves like an app. A website can be made so that a customer can add it to their phone's home screen, and it can hold an account and a booking history. It covers many of the reasons people ask for an app, without the app stores.
4. A mobile app. Only when the first three cannot do the job.

Many businesses stop at step one or two. A few need step four, and for them the earlier steps were still useful, because they showed what customers actually do.

Where an app does make sense

These are illustrations, not client stories.

• A food delivery business. Customers order repeatedly, want to track an order and want to reorder quickly. An app fits.
• A school or coaching class with many parents. Daily notices, attendance and fee reminders are a weekly task for many people.
• A business with staff in the field. Technicians, delivery riders or inspectors who need a tool on the job that works with a poor signal.
• A loyalty scheme customers use every visit.

We have published one example: Bitex99, a food delivery app for tier 3 and tier 4 cities, with 2,300 app downloads in 9 days.

Where a website or WhatsApp is enough

• A clinic, where patients want to find the doctor, check timings and book. See our guide for clinics.
• A shop, where customers want to check what you sell, where you are and when you are open.
• A restaurant that takes a few phone or WhatsApp orders and does not have the volume to justify its own app.
• A service business, such as a tutor, a salon or a repair shop, where the customer books once and comes back months later.

Designing for phones in a smaller city

If an app is the answer, build for the phones your customers really have. Many customers in India use Android phones, often mid-range ones, with limited storage and mobile data that is patchy or costly. So keep the app small and quick to open, make it work on a slow connection, and let people do the main job without a long sign-up. Start with Android and add iPhone once the first version has proved itself, unless your customers are mostly on iPhones.

Before you ask for a quote

Write one page that answers these. It makes every quote better and easier to compare.

• The one job the app does. If you need two sentences, you may be describing two apps.
• Who uses it and how often.
• What must work offline or on a slow connection.
• What it connects to, such as payments, your accounts or WhatsApp.
• How you will know it worked, such as the number of repeat orders in the first three months.

Then ask each developer the questions from our website quote guide, with two changes: who owns the source code and the Google Play and Apple accounts, and what upkeep costs each year. If you would like help deciding, our app development page explains how we advise, including when we say a website is enough.