Why are there so many apps that could be websites?
Seriously. I don’t want to install something on my phone when the dev is just using a WebView, if that’s what it’s called. When the app is basically just a website with the browser hidden.
What’s the reason for that? To attach the customer? To sell the app for money? Is there more ad revenue that way? Do you reach more people?
(Are there any good reasons for it, too? Security, maybe?)
I always assumed the reason was to get more tendrils into your phone for that sweet sweet data $$$ and allowing themselves more control over shoving notifications in your face.
I would say in some cases, people are conditioned now to expect an app, even if it’s basically a website. I think in a mobile context, most non-techy people don’t normally think to open up a browser and say, browse Amazon or something. Instead they go for the Amazon app on their phone, and browse/shop/whatever there.
I wouldn’t say this is exclusive to phones either. I once worked on a product that was essentially web-native, but they had to ship a desktop app because their market expected it, even though it was only a web-view wrapper to the website. No offline storage, no difference in behaviour, or need for some specific API; nothing. I guess you try explaining to boomers that a web-view desktop app is unnecessary.
The data vacuuming and additional marketing are just added benefits for the app developer, if they go down that path (they usually do).
Because the majority of internet connections these days are from a mobile device. And if you want to reach the average person, you have to be where they are looking.
I think it’s really a shame that mobile OS’s are so locked down that the only real way for people to download things is through some centralized app store.
A study by Google and Ipsos found that while app stores are a popular destination for finding new apps, they are not the only method. About 40% of smartphone users browse for apps in app stores, and one in four app users discovers an app through a search engine. This suggests that a significant portion of smartphone users are indeed using search engines, rather than just app stores, to find apps and information
Additionally, data from Amplitude Labs reveals that app usage grew by 36% from January 2020 to December 2021, while website usage grew by 57% in the same period. By December 2021, the user base was almost evenly split between apps and websites, with 54% of users on apps and 46% on websites
while me or you might go to a search engine and type in “weather today”, i think there really is a large chunk of the userbase (somewhere near half) who would rather go into the app store and type in “weather”
i think it might be an age thing with older people, but honestly, maybe even younger generations like alpha / z. they grew up in a different OS environment. we grew up on PCs, they grow up on mobile OS
We had a project once that ran completely fine as a website except for the ability to scan bar codes. That one thing forced us to create an app and the rest of the app was just showing the website.
Can’t you use camera on browser? I actually seen a project that does some complex things using camera [1] and it ran in browser. I’m confident scanning bar codes is possible.
There are JS barcode libraries out there, some better than others, some free, others paid. A few years back at a corporate job I built just the thing - a web app designed to replace a 3rd party mobile app. The back-end was Laravel + various AWS services, with a responsive front-end made with Tailwind.
The requirements were to make it mimic most of the mobile app’s functionality. There was also location tracking via browser APIs (to track the cargo at all times) and a barcode scanner. I used a paid library for that, and it was quite expensive, but very reliable. So it can definitely be done as a web app.
And you know the rest of the reasons when at the first start your minesweeper app needs to have access to your photos, location, camera and microphone.
On my desktop I have browser tabs for WhatsApp, messenger, Skype, gMailChatTalkHangouts and slack. I know slack’s app was ass but I miss the rest.
I want a discrete app that doesn’t crash with chrome and which sits in my tooltray so I don’t have to fucking search for it whenever something makes a noise (ctrl-alt-a). I want to see it from the blink in the corner and not by scanning 31 windows of 7 groups of 12 tabs each.
Often times I just give up and hope it also makes my phone spork too so I can grab it there.
Progressive Web Apps were supposed to marry these schools of thought, but maybe we hoped for too much because it’s still garbage Chromium under the hood.
Just make everything for maximum interoperability I guess? I recently saw and forgot the name of a system for creating and displaying Github-like pull requests and associated discussions that are sent in via email. A very simple web interface displaying plain-text that could reasonably have been extended any way you like. I am beginning to see the appeal of the plain-text revolution.
All I see are people talking about consumer apps that could be websites, but it’s a problem in the business world, too. My small business makes a service for other small businesses and all our big competitors use apps for their system while we use a web app. Some even restrict to only iOS or Android, too. It blows our potential customers’ minds when they see that ours is just a website with at least as much functionality as the competition and the ability to access it from anything.
I have no idea why anyone would do it differently as it’s WAY easier/cheaper to maintain this website than deal with app ecosystems. And there simply aren’t enough users in this space to merit data scraping like with consumer apps.
the free ad space on your home screen. Sure it’s a small ad, but you see it all the time.
notifications. Even if only a small fraction of users allow them, it’s a lot of free advertising. And yes, you can put notifications on websites, but that’s not as reliable or as expected as native app notifications.
permissions. The more legitimate apps may provide some sort of additional functionality that their website can’t provide on its own. The shadier ones sell the data they get from the sensors all over your phone.
data storage. Technically web storage is a thing, but it’s definitely not something you want to hang your whole business on right now.
integrations. You can integrate, for example, Google Pay/Apple Pay on a website, but it’s more of a hassle. In an app, it’s practically drop-in. Same with the share functionality.
why not? If you already have a mobile site and can make an app from it reasonably easy, there’s no reason not to. You’ve become multi-channel with no extra work.
There are probably other reasons, but those are the ones that make sense to me, being in the industry.
Excellent points. I’d just add one more: user friendliness. The average user prefers to click on an icon on their screen, rather than open a Web browser and either type in the URL or access bookmarks, which tends to be rather clunky on a phone.
Also capabilities. Some things are a hassle that doesn’t always work as expected (e.g. camera) and some things are just not possible at all (NFC). Even your airline app that simply shows a barcode that you scan at the gate will want to increase display brightness while it’s doing so and be able to show you a notification when you have delay or gate change…
I worked at a company that wanted to kill their app (just a web view for the site anyway) but trying to convince all the users to move proved unfeasible
I suppose having a dedicated “launch this website” button has some level of convenience over typing out the URL
I’ve just gone through this pain with my company. It took 14 months to finally get rid of the app and the pushback from users was horrendous.
We eventually broke the app to the point that all it did in the end was show a page that made users open the site in their mobile browser and use the “Add to home page” feature present in mobile Safari, Chrome and Firefox to put an icon on the homepage like an app.
Absolutely worth it though to not have to deal with Apple’s developer hostile and shitty app tools/ecosystem while paying for the privilege. I don’t miss having to deal with the “moving target” nature of Android and iOS either where everything breaks or has a new API every 5 minutes. Mobile browsers are so capable now with javascript APIs to access most of the device hardware so apps really aren’t as necessary as they once were.
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