An app or a website? How to decide

If the customer will use it once or twice, build a website. If they will come back every week, an app earns its cost. The reason is not technical: an app asks the customer to decide once to install it, and that decision is expensive; after it, an app is far easier to reach than a browser.

The questions that decide it

1. How many times a month will they come back? Fewer than twice — a website.
2. Do you need something only a phone does — camera, location, notifications, offline? Then an app.
3. How will they find you the first time? If from search, you need a website regardless.
4. Do you have somebody to keep updating it? The stores require it; a website does not.

The cost nobody mentions

An app does not end at handover. The stores change their rules, the operating systems update, and an app that is not updated gets removed. A website untouched for a year still works. Put that in the calculation before deciding, not afterwards.

The middle answer that works

Start with a site that is fast and works on a phone. If the numbers say people come back, the app then becomes a decision based on something rather than on a guess — and you will know exactly which screens to build.

An example, without figures

A restaurant taking orders: the customer orders weekly or more, wants to repeat the same order with one tap, and wants to know where it is. That is an app. A consultancy: the customer searches for you once, reads, and calls. That is a website, and it has to show up in search. A clothing store: people buy from the site first, and if they come back often the app becomes the second step, not the first.

What both need anyway

• A way for people to reach you from inside it — WhatsApp or chat — not a number on a “contact us” page.
• Somebody on your side who can change the content without a developer.
• Ownership of the accounts and the source in your name, so the next decision is yours.