Responsive Website or Mobile App: Do You Need Both?

Choosing between a responsive website and a native app is more a business call than going into the technical capabilities of what each platform has to offer. The reason is that the same set of customers that access your business through a desktop could potentially connect with your brand on the go through their smartphones.

According to mobile industry reports, 7.12% of all website traffic worldwide came from handheld devices in 2011. In 2012, that figure rose to 11.78%.1 According to eMarketer (a leading digital media market research firm), more than 58% of American adults will be regular mobile web users by the end of 2016. Tablets and smartphones are becoming the default choice for connecting to the internet. The web has become an essential part of our lives, and users are connected to their internet devices from anywhere and all the time.

It’s a difficult choice to make since both options present advantages and disadvantages that must be taken into consideration when moving forward.

It’s a tough call to make when deciding between responsive design or an app, but in the end, it depends on the goals of your business.

If your company can afford it, it’s highly recommended that you build both a responsive site and a native mobile app in order to help your business work towards capturing the attention of your entire mobile audience. The native mobile app will provide a mobile centric experience for your existing and most loyal customers, while your responsive website can help provide an optimized experience to new and old visitors browsing your website or discovering it for the very first time.

For example, popular ecommerce brand Nasty Gal has a responsive website and a mobile app to help provide the best experience for its shoppers however they wish to shop the brand’s products.

Most companies can’t afford to do both, which is why it’s important to understand the advantages of both options when addressing your company’s mobile priorities.

Responsive Design isn’t A Cure-all

Responsive Web design is certainly the most affordable option for your business as compared to the development of a mobile app. Take into consideration the initial costs of redesigning your website to be mobile friendly, then the cost of occasional upkeep and upgrades.

If visibility in the search engines is an increasingly important part of your strategy to grow your business, then a responsive website is critical in helping grow traffic to your website. A mobile app lives in a closed environment and cannot be indexed by the search engines, which requires driving traffic to this app through alternate methods.

Depending on your designer and the size of your website, a responsive Web design often takes far less time to create then does a mobile app since there’s no app store approval or extensive guidelines to follow as compared to what Google Play, the Apple app store and the Windows Phone app store require for launching an app.

If the goal of your destination online is to be universally accessible from any device, then responsive design is the solution. A mobile app is designed for a unique experience; exclusive to the operating system it lives on, which means it isn’t a one size fits all fix.

However, don’t think of responsive design as the easy way out when it comes to optimizing your website across mobile devices. Although a responsive website optimizes your experience, it doesn’t incorporate all the smart phone features like the camera or GPS that a native mobile app can.

A mobile app will provide users with unique functionality and speed that can’t be achieve with a responsive website, but can be experienced on the operating system you choose to design your app on.

It’s better than not having a mobile-friendly version of your website, but it’s not the finally solution for your customer’s experience with your business on mobile. Again, the choice between responsive and a mobile app depends on what your goals are for mobile.

Consult Analytics to Inform Your Native Mobile App

A mobile app offers a compelling, unique and mobile specific experience for your customers, which is one of the main reasons why your company should consider designing an app over worrying about making your existing website mobile-friendly.

First and foremost, if you have existing data to analyze than it is important to use your analytics tools like Google Analytics or Omniture to see what mobile devices are used the most to visit your website in the past few months. This can help inform what operating system you decide to design your app on.

Whether you decide to go with iOS, Android, Windows Phone or another less popular operating system, it’s essential to match the features of the operating system with the type of app you’re looking to create whether it’s an ecommerce store, a content focused website etc.

Besides being able to utilize more of the features incorporated in a mobile device into the experience, a mobile app often has access to more data from a user and therefore, can provide a more personalized experience.

This personalization through data could play out in the types of push notifications an app sends you, product recommendations, suggested content to view or other specific user-driven actions. When a user makes a profile on an app, it makes gathering data about a person and their online habits much easier for a business and much quicker and smoother for the user continually using this app to shop, find events to attend, listen to music and perform other tasks.

As of now, a native mobile app offers the best user experience for a person on a mobile device since there are still limitations to how HTML 5 can be parsed on mobile.

As the complexity of the responsive website increases, the more likely the user experience will begin to suffer. A native mobile app offers the best user experience to your audience, taking advantage of the phone’s functions and the expectations of customers using these devices.

Lastly, in-app purchasing drives 76 percent of all app marketplace revenues to date since once it is setup, it’s particularly easy for users to make a purchase with pre-entered credit card information.

This is best suited if your app will offer micro-purchases, which our low price point products or services within the app, like buying virtual goods, membership to the premium version of the app or access to additional content.

Why Your New Website Should Be Responsive

Responsive Design

This article is for the benefit of those who are looking to get a new website designed in the very near future and want the best for them. We will try to answer the question, why your new website should be Responsive. Of course this is also going to help those who are still not aware of what Responsive Design is all about.

PC Sales Declining – What Does It Mean For Your Business
So why do we design websites? The ultimate motive is to reach out to as many people as possible and deliver the message that we want to get across to them. It is also true that it is the first time that PC sales are going down than the previous year. More and more people are now buying products that can replace their PC like tablets, and iPads and using them to go online and surf the net. They are also buying devices like smartphones, iPhones and the likes. And if more and more people are starting to use other devices, shouldn’t your website also be accessible on these devices?

Regular Websites Do Not Work On All Devices
Unfortunately, most websites do not open so beautifully on these devices as it does on a PC; simply because these sites were designed to work on a PC. One simple option would be to build a mobile version of your website targeting a particular device. But the number of devices is just too many, and new ones are getting added to the list of existing ones really fast. The devices also differ significantly in terms of screen width, resolution, and orientation. So the challenge for designing for every screen is huge and is not a practical solution to the problem.

Responsive Web Design has the solution
So how does Responsive Web Design solve our problems? Well, with this relatively new technology, you no longer need multiple websites targeting multiple devices. You just need one website that adapts to the device on which it is being viewed. It does so with the help of fluid images and smart use of CSS media queries by determining the width and resolution of the device. The website changes layout resizes images and adapts quite magically on all devices.

Imagine a website with responsive web design that adjusts to the device that your customers are using to view your business online. Imagine the content, the text, titles and the images actually moving so that they fit within the size of that specific screen. Whether it’s a tablet or an iPhone or an iMac or a PC desktop! You can literally see the adjustments happen as the browser size shifts from one size to another.

Benefits of Responsive Websites
This relatively new technology is being called the future of the web by many. It is a paradigm shift akin to the transition from table based layouts to CSS, which made a huge impact on the web design industry.

Easy to Maintain
Creating multiple versions of your website is costly and cumbersome. Considering just a desktop, iPad and iPhone for example, means that you will need to triple your efforts when looking to make an update to your web page. With Responsive web design you’ll avoid this extra effort completely. Your website will work seamlessly on different devices and so when you need to update your website you only update one platform through your content management system. In the long run this will save you time and help avoid headaches with having to work on multiple versions of your website.

Improves your SEO
The benefit here is in the fact that you will only need to optimize content for one link. The URL structure remains constant for all devices. With Responsive design you have one URL that is easy to update and optimize your content which in turn optimizes your content for all devices. Whether it’s a Samsung phone, iPad or desktop responsive web design makes it easy for the Google crawlers to index your website pages.

Higher Conversion
If you are selling more of your goods and services online then you are converting more. If your customers are finding your business and making purchases through the use of tablets and mobile devices then your conversion is increasing. If one of your many conversion metrics happens to be sales then you’ll see an upward shift in your top line as well!

Increases Mobile Sales
It’s no secret that the mobile revolution has been in full force for quite some time now. People are buying online and they are using their tablets and smart phones to make those purchases. To get them even more comfortable in doing so responsive design is a must.

It is estimated that within the next few years, there will be more people online using mobile devices than those using PCs. Therefore, it makes sense to be where your customers are, otherwise, you lose out on business.

Why Good Advertising Works?!!

“Advertising doesn’t affect us” - For those of us in marketing, this is a familiar thing to hear. You can respond to this by pointing out that U.S. companies would not invest $70 billion (yes, that's the size of TV's ad market) in something they thought didn't work. Companies expect advertising to produce returns, just like any other investment. The reason why many of us think advertising doesn't "work" is that we tend to believe that advertisements are trying to make us do something immediately.

This is wrong.

Successful advertising rarely succeeds through argument or calls to action. Instead, it creates positive memories and feelings that influence our behavior over time to encourage us to buy something at a later date. No one likes to think that they are easily influenced. In fact, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that we hardly respond to attempts at persuasion.

Instead, the best advertisements are ingenious and well suited at leaving impressions. In sum, the best advertisements use images, jingles, and stories to focus attention on the brand. They are not just creative for creative's sake. The crucial challenge for marketers is: What's the best way to translate these memories into actions?

There is a debate between two groups. The first group believes in raw persuasion. Its focus is on making an argument that will encourage you, with the delivery of "new news," to buy something right away. The second group believes in the power of engagement. Its focus is on creating a positive experience that will influence you over the longer-term and help you decide to buy something at a later date. Here, the objective is to seed positive ideas and memories that will attract you to the brand.

But this distinction is largely a myth. Advertisers actually have little control over how audiences receive their message. New news might appear relevant and credible to some while others consider it unpersuasive. Similarly, a TV commercial designed to engage the viewer might cause you to buy the brand immediately, simply because it reminds you of how much you enjoy the product. So it differs from individual to individual.

Once in a blue moon an advert might leave you thinking, "Just what I need!" More often, however, you barely attend to the commercials you see. Unless you see the advertisement again and again it doesn't trigger the urge to buy something at a later date. Even then, it is not the ad that matters. The ideas, impressions and positive feelings about the brand that matter.

So contrary to many people's beliefs, advertising does influence them. But advertising's influence is subtle. But engaging and memorable ads seed memories that influence our behavior. You may not think advertising influences you, but marketers do!!

A Snapshot of the Benefits of Professional Web Designing

The Professional Web Designing Companies provide effective and efficient online and brand engineering solutions which are actually measurable. For designing the best website as per your business requirements, taking the help from website designing companies in India can be great of great help. The companies can help in the following ways:

Custom Web Designing: You can get the custom design as per your desire and business requirements. The companies design specifically as per the needs of their clients.

Dynamic Website Design: It refers to the category of content that should be generated when demand for page is raised by the customer in the web browser. For this type of content you require a dynamic website and designing of this website is known as Dynamic Website Designing.

Search Engine Optimization: You can get good visibility of your site with search engine optimization. This involves the free advertisement with no investment.

Graphic Designing: The Web Designing Company offers innovative graphic designs to the customers that can grab the instant attention of the clients. It involves a creative and systematic plan to solve a problem or achieve certain objectives, with the use of images, symbols or even words. It is visual communication and the aesthetic expression of concepts and ideas using various graphic elements and tools.

Social Media Optimization: Social media is becoming immensely important for business as well. Social media optimization(SMO) is the use of a number of social media outlets and communities to generate publicity to increase the awareness of a product, brand or event.

You can take the help from web designing companies to enable the publicity of your products on the social media.

E-commerce Web Designing: This is one of the most important criteria required by the internet marketers. The companies can help in creating the e-commerce website that are attractive as well as user friendly and which can increase conversion rates and online visibility. This is really important for sales optimization.

There are many other things on which you can take help from professional web designing companies; like redesigning, responsive design requirements, creating browser compatibility and many more. If you plan to get a unique website developed for your company, have a look at the following link: www.thedesignboyz.com