Website, web app or mobile app: which should you build?

If people need to find you, it is a website. If they need to sign in and get something done, it is a web app. If it needs the camera, notifications or to work with no signal, and people will open it most days, it is a mobile app. Most businesses need the first, a good number need the second, and fewer need the third than think they do.

That is the short version. The longer version matters because the three cost very different amounts, take very different lengths of time, and leave you with very different things to look after. Below is the decision tree we walk through with clients, in prose, with the questions that settle it.

What each one is

A website is pages. People arrive from a search, a link or a business card, read, and decide whether to get in touch. It is public, it is indexed by search engines, and most of it can be edited by your own team through a content system. It is read far more than it is used.

A web app lives in the browser too, but behind a sign-in, and people use it rather than read it. A customer portal, a booking system, a quoting tool, an internal system that replaced a spreadsheet. It is deployed once, in one place, and everyone is on the latest version the moment they refresh.

A mobile app is installed from an app store on to a phone. It can use the camera, send notifications, know where the phone is and keep working without a signal. It is built for each platform, submitted for review, and updated through the store, which means two of everything and a cycle that never quite ends.

Who each suits

A website suits almost everyone, because almost everyone needs to be found and understood. Trades, professional services, charities, clinics, venues, manufacturers. If your customer’s first move is a search, the website is where you win or lose them.

A web app suits a business with a process its customers or staff take part in. Clients who need to see the status of something, staff who need to update it, partners who need to submit it. If the words “log in” appear in your description of the idea, it is a web app at least.

A mobile app suits a product people will reach for often, in the moment, on the move. Something they use on site, out of the office, in the gym, on the sofa during the match. It earns its icon on the home screen by being opened a lot, and it has to be good enough to survive sitting next to the apps people already love.

The questions that settle it

Work through these in order. Most decisions are made by the third one.

• Does it need to be found by search? If yes, you need a website, whatever else you build. App stores have their own search, but it is not where people go to find a business, and what is inside an app is invisible to a search engine.
• Does it need an account? If people need to see their own things and only their own things, you are past a website. Web app or mobile app, depending on what follows.
• Does it need the phone’s hardware? Camera, barcode scanning, push notifications, location, working offline. Browsers can do more of this than they used to, but if the whole point of the product is one of these, it is probably a mobile app.
• How often will people open it? Daily, and an app on the home screen earns its place. Monthly, and nobody will install it; they will want a link that works. This question ends more app ideas than any other, and it should.
• Who maintains it? A website is updated by your team through the content system. A web app is updated by whoever built it, in one place. A mobile app needs updating when the operating systems change each year, on both platforms, and a lapse means the store may stop listing it.

The common middle ground: a web app that also installs

There is a well-established middle path that many businesses do not know exists. A web app can be built so that, on a phone, it offers to add itself to the home screen, opens full-screen without browser furniture, keeps working through a weak signal and, on most modern phones, sends notifications. No store, no review, no installation beyond a tap.

The trade is that there is no store listing, which is both the advantage and the cost. If your customers would never go looking for you in an app store, you lose nothing. If being in the store is part of how you expect to be found or trusted, you need the real thing.

One codebase, several screens

When a mobile app is the right answer, the question “iOS or Android first” usually has a better answer than either. Our own product, fixtur, a football predictions game, is built for iOS, Android and web from one codebase, so the three stay in step and a feature is built once. InnerCode, our values-led coaching app, has a consumer app alongside a website: the website does the job of being found and the app does the job of being used every day.

That pattern, a website to be found and an app to be used, is the one most products end up with. The mistake is starting with the app and discovering nobody can find it.

Cost and time, honestly

We do not publish figures, because the range is too wide to be useful and the honest answer is “it depends on what it has to do”. What we can say is how they compare.

A website is the least expensive and the fastest, and most of its ongoing cost is your own team’s time keeping the content fresh. A web app costs more, mainly because of accounts, data and the process it has to model, and it has a running cost for hosting and upkeep. A mobile app costs the most and takes the longest, because there are two platforms, a store review at each release, and a yearly cycle of operating system changes to keep up with. It is also the only one of the three that is never really finished.

None of that makes the app the wrong answer. It makes it the answer to a specific question, and it is worth being sure that is the question you are asking.

What to do next

Write down what the thing has to do in a paragraph, then run it through the five questions above. If it stops at the first, start with a website. If it gets past the second, it is an app of some kind, and the remaining questions tell you which. If you would like us to run it through with you, we will, and we will tell you if the answer is a well-built website after all.