Re:Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App
by oftenwrong on Friday January 04, 2019 @02:18PM
(#18826839)
Companies saddle their mobile web experience with excessive animations, gobs of dynamic elements, screen-hogging navigation bars/sharing buttons/overlays, poorly-implemented infinite scrolling, etc, etc... and then they conclude that mobile web sites are bad and native apps are good.
People have forgotten that you can build a website that isn't a user-hostile SPA train-wreck.
Amen. Twitter[1] and Starbucks[2] have both built gorgeous PWAs in the last couple of years that are perfect replacements for 98% of a native app's functionality. It can be done, people!
1. https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/open-sourc...
2. https://twitter.com/davidbrunelle/status/905931990444244995
Re:Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App
by charleslmunger on Saturday January 05, 2019 @12:28AM
(#18830088)
Twitter's mobile web site is the most unreliable site I encounter with any frequency. Fully 80% of the links I get to Twitter fail to load, telling me to try again, which only works when I fully refresh the page.
I don't know how it compares to their native app.
Re:Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App
by lowercased on Friday January 04, 2019 @05:21PM
(#18828265)
Done in-house, I'd bet, and that's another disconnect to overcome.
Outsourcing website and/or mobile dev to external company, the focus is often more going to be on whizbangflashy, vs sleek/slim/fast/simple, to justify whatever budget they're getting.
I do find that I end up using the mobile web client for twitter as often as i do the native client. It's not much in either case, but the mobile web client is generally 'good enough' such that if that's where I land, I don't feel a need to jump to the native client.
You're missing the point. A mobile app isn't for the benefit of the user, it's for the benefit of the analytics and marketing teams. They want to be able to know who's engaging with it, and spam them with notifications.
How much of a usability advantage does an app for, say, IMDB offer that the regular website doesn't? Or the loyalty card apps that a lot of grocery stores and coffee shops use now?
A lot of apps on the market are functionally just wrappers put around a poorly optimized website. They'd be better off putting their efforts towards making a great experience on the mobile web instead of trend-chasing.
In the iOS environment Apple could actually help here through a simple awareness campaign. You can save website bookmarks as icons on your home screen as it is, but this functionality is little known and not easily discoverable.