Mobile Website And Mobile Apps – A Comparison

By Author: Deepak Gupta
Total Articles: 20
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If you are chalking out a plan to expand your reach among millions of mobile phone users for maintaining your online presence, then probably, you will faced with a dilemma whether to develop a mobile website or a mobile application. So, let us take a moment to figure out the main differences between the two so that decision making becomes a lot easier for you.

Device compatibility: People can quite easily access mobile websites across many kinds of the mobile phones. However, in case of the mobile applications, it is to be made sure that an application is compatible with a particular mobile device.

Availability: Users with the help of a browser can instantly navigate a mobile website across a range of mobile devices such as the BlackBerry, Android, iPhone, etc, whereas, the users can get an access to an application only after first downloading and then installing it.

Sharing: The URL’s of a mobile website can be quite easily shared in a trouble free manner through various means such as an Email or a text message. Several ...
... prominent social networking websites such as Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, etc can also be used for the purpose of sharing websites. It is certainly quite a difficult task to share the mobile applications by using a mail or through various networking sites.

Life cycle: A very interesting thing here is that a normal life cycle of a mobile application is estimated to be only 30 days. On the other hand, it is pretty hard to analyze the shelf life of mobile websites because they are kept running for many years simply by updating the design or content on the regular basis.

Upgradability: If any content or a design of a mobile website is required to be changed, then an individual will be only required to publish the edited part and the changes will be visible right away. On the contrary, upgrading an application is a very time consuming task because here the users will be required to download and install all the updates that are offered by the mobile application developer and then use it.

Time and cost: The amount of time and not to be forgotten investment that is put in a mobile application development is very huge. Mobile websites are quite easy to develop in a timely manner and the best thing is that designing of a websites does not require shelling out an exorbitant amount of money.

All in all, if the main objective of an organization is to promote their website for the main purpose of enhancing visibility and market products, then a mobile website is a feasible option here. On the other hand, if a target of an organization is to interactively engage with a larger audience base, then going with mobile application development is a very sound option here.