NB: This is a guest post from David Thomson, chief executive of Momentum Design Lab and Bynd.
The current mobile conundrum is that there is no “one size fits all” solution.
Selecting which mobile strategy suits you best depends highly upon the intended user experience.
For the more sophisticated, some would argue that a combination of these solutions offers the best returns on mobile investment.
To give you the lay of the land on what mobile strategy to choose, we have assembled some quick overviews:
Go Native if:
If you have high levels of usage and engagement in your platform and need the performance that coding native will give you across Android, iOS, Win 8 and BB10. Companies with large user bases, expected high usage rates, and the need for intensive graphic processing should develop native mobile applications. It may also benefit you to program natively if you are a ‘mobile first’ company that will not be going down the web route. Keep in mind the amount of time and resources needed to make a native app really great.
Go Browser-based (Native wrapper) if:
You want to use a single HTML5 technology such as JQuery Mobile or Sencha Touch to work across several platforms with only the native wrapper to control your installation.
When building your project in HTML5 you simultaneously accomplish your mobile site, as the same code can be run uncached via URL. Most companies benefit greatly from this approach as the HTML5 framework is approaching near-native performance.
Go Responsive if:
Your company possesses a significant amount of user experience design and development resources capable of maintaining a great brand experience across all unique screen layouts, targeted device resolutions, and screen orientations. The notion of having one website that can work well on web, mobile and tablet can be really powerful, especially when you’re talking about SEO. Unfortunately, most current responsive designs dilute the overall user experience to accommodate all use cases. The upcoming release of Adobe Edge Reflow will change this for designers.
Go Mobile Site if:
Your site analytics show you need it. As the principal of a UX firm we opted not to do a mobile UI. The reason: less than 1% traffic comes from mobile devices.
If you have the traffic to justify this, choose an HTML5-based solution, responsive design method, or build small format html pages with larger elements for touch. One of the benefits of doing a mobile site is that it can run on any mobile browser unlike native apps that can only run on specific platforms.
For many companies with more complex needs and multiple user experiences across channels, a combination of the approaches may be best.
NB: This is a guest post from David Thomson, chief executive of Momentum Design Lab and Bynd
NB2: Mobile image via Shutterstock
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Excellent post David. This was a hot topic of discussion at the eTourism Summit last week in San Fran. It’s not really a question of whether one is better than the other, it’s more important to understand the user context and then use the approach that is best suited for that situation. If the research says that mobile apps are not the way to go for your scenario, don’t waste time building a mobile app.
In our case, the analytics were telling us that 23% of visitors to customer booking websites were coming from mobile devices (up from 12% last year), it was pretty clear which direction we needed to go. jQuery mobile (BTW) is an excellent framework to use.
Serious about mobile? Go native because as your app matures, the reasons you should not have gone HTML5 will compound.
Go html5/hybrid if you can’t afford a native app or just arn’t that serious about your mobile app. The performance will suffer, little or no utility offline (plenty of instances of offline use), and limited utility when online in contrast to native. There are some exceptions such as if your app is an extension or mobilization of your successful website. Even so, consider email, HTML 5 app or native? Arn’t you trying to (in your thoughts) justify how it /could/ be HTML 5 knowing full well the user experience as native is vastly superior in every way?
The key to making the decision is understanding that nobody beats your door down for an html5 app. The app market exploded overnight when the iPhone native app capability was opened up but did nothing as HTML 5 for the year prior. The mobile native app market made Apple the #1 mobile vendor and redefined the computing industry to go mobile. The mobile native app put hurt on the computing industry juggernaut Microsoft. Native apps made Apple the most valuable company in the world. Easy math. It is all about the apps … The native apps.
(And because web apps are famous for losing data, I have to put this note into the clipboard before pressing the “submit”