Create a web app instead of mobile app

The most important thing when you will create a product is the cost of made it.

PS. This is not an hate-article. Just some arguments to think twice before start coding.

In United States the Pew Center for Research recently discovered that a full 95% of adult citizens possess a mobile phone, and that 77% of those people use a smartphone. This decade, smartphones has turned a necessary article to live with and it’s really awesome the time we spend using them.

So many startup like Uber, Instagram, and others have been very focused in their Mobile App, in some case, the App represent the whole business to those big tech companies. The reason is the global mobile application market, which is accounted for $108,440 million in 2016.

But wait… We have all this data saying that the mobile app is the best idea, why i say no?

Elementary, my dear Watson, Here, i will show you some good reason to think well when you will build a new product.

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Reasons to first choose web instead of mobile.

1. Minimum viable Product — MVP.

When we are working on a web app, the change are deploy almost immediately. In contrast, mobile development has a longer process, where we first need build the apk/apa, next, you have to submit the new file to the market and, after all, the user should install the new update of the app, maybe just to get a few changes. Look simple, right?.

Let’s explain a little more about how complex the publishing step could become. Often, Google and apple add stricter requirements for what an app should have/be to get ready on their Store.

In other hands, the cost of the App Store license is $99/year, whereas a domain is like 10 times less than this. At the end, there are others small costs which might be important for the bootstrapping your product.

2. Getting the clients into.

Clients are lazy, no one wants install or download apps anymore. Is expensive the huge effort that you have to do trying to convincing some one to download your app to their phone. You can’t avoid the market of the cheap smartphone, and sometimes these devices have not storage enough to install you app.

Competition and app fatigue has driven the cost of acquisition for apps up dramatically in the last five years. The great advantage over mobile applications is that you web can be found and used with just a browser. No downloads, no installation, no headaches.

3. Adaptable to the environment.

When you begin a startup, (just if you got money to blow) you maybe want reduce all the over cost of resources as money and specially time. So built a web app give you the chance to create a product with low cost of time and can be used in any device keeping in mind the desktop and tablet too.

The automatic translation in the web make easier the internalization of your young-product, and you can avoid this extra work at the beginning.

4. Doing profit

If you building an IOS or Android app its mean you’ll have to give a partly profit of every purchase and subscription. In contrasts, platforms as Stripe take a lower percent (3%) of every payments we get in our web.

We are also considering that your web app could make most complex thing and have full-tools, and more features than a mobile app, making a higher price and most benefits to the founders.

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The Exceptions

The decisions in a founder’s life don’t follow a single pattern, always depends of the moment, the conditions and others things that might change the plan. Let’s check these that i consider you can keep in mind.

• Use of the location: Some of examples are Uber, Bird, Maps.
• Use of native components: If you product will need the use of component like sensors, camera, gyroscope, etc.
• Use frequent of small peace of information: This part might deserve its own article, but all related to tracking the information of the users.

Conclusion

My intention of this article was not directly argue against mobile development, on the contrary, i show you don't need to attach to one way to built your products just because you like it, you have to understand if this way is the best and the most efficient. The next time you want to create something new, first think about what you want, and after, the best way to do it, even if this way is not how you wished

If you like or not, give me your feedback, i’d glad to read what you think. Thanks for reading.