In the multi-device, multi-connected world, the consumer’s experience with your brand is moving more and more toward mobile. With 5.2 billion currently active mobile phone subscriptions, mobile is the fastest-growing giant industry on the planet by a wide margin. The mobile trend is not lost on marketers, and many are moving fast to capitalize on it. Despite a clear understanding of the landscape, a question still on many marketers’ minds is whether a brand should launch a mobile website or a mobile application and, in some cases, whether they should launch both.
A deeper look at the question provides a pretty clear answer. When you consider that only 22% of mobile phone users access apps on their phones, and only a quarter of all downloaded apps are ever opened more than once you might not want to jump on the mobile application bandwagon too soon. Mobile applications can be expensive to develop and launch not to mention the cost of promoting this application and getting the consumer to use it. In other words, your mobile application needs to be well thought out, have a significant budget behind it as well as a strategic objective. Otherwise, it is bound to fail.
In the meantime, consumers are accessing your website on their mobile website and having a poor experience. Most brand websites do not lend themselves well on mobile browsers, and the vast majority of consumers have a negative experience accessing it. Whether your target uses mobile apps or not, they are accessing your website on their mobile devices. You simply cannot afford to neglect their experience and ignore the resulting negative perception of your brand.
When you frame the question in terms of the experience of the mobile Internet user, the better solution becomes clear: The immediate creation of a mobile device friendly website. In fact, providing a seamless mobile experience on a mobile device should be the first priority of any mobile marketing strategy. Why wouldn’t you? It’s fairly inexpensive, can be quickly implemented, and the positive results are immediate.
This is not to say the mobile application has no place in your mobile strategy. I am only suggesting that you take a more careful approach since developing and deploying a mobile app is more complicated and requires a robust mobile strategy. In short, you should consider the mobile website a first step and the mobile application a natural outgrowth of that step.
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