In the Balance: Mobile App or Mobile Web

When you pick up your mobile device to interact with your favorite retailers, do you click on the merchant’s app or open a web browser to access their website? It probably depends on what you want to do, whether the company even offers an app, and whether their mobile site is comfortably readable on your device.

No Clear Winner

According to most recent studies on the topic, consumers aren’t showing a strong overall app vs. browser preference. At least not yet. But it’s a big question on the minds of retailers who want to invest in the right technologies. Do they develop apps or mobile websites? While it’s likely they’re pursuing both, it’s hard to judge what their customers will ultimately use when they turn on their phones to connect, consume content, and buy.

It’s obvious that people want to use their mobile phones to perform a variety of tasks, whether they perform them on mobile apps or through the mobile web. As of today, they’re using both. When asked in a survey by IAB Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence how they use the mobile Internet on your smartphone, 37% of participants said they favor apps, 30% said they favor mobile web, and 33% said they favor them equally.

While apps and the mobile web may be tied for first, we can take a look at what makes them different—and what might ultimately push them ahead in the polls:

Mobile Apps

A mobile app is a piece of software downloaded and installed onto a smartphone or tablet. Users open a retailer’s app to access information, browse products, and even make purchases. Apps can offer more control to the company, enabling them to send push notifications, gather data about customers’ behavior and preferences, and integrate loyalty programs and mobile payment capabilities.

Fans of mobile apps applaud them for their speed, convenience, and ease of use, and they can usually work in some capacity when their phone isn’t connected. According to Quixey’s Consumer Mobile Survey, 34.4% of respondents cited ‘features and functionalities’ as the primary reason they prefer mobile apps over mobile web, with ‘user experience’ not far behind at 28.4%. Yet only 12% of respondents said that they would still prefer to download an app, even if they could get all the features and functionality of an app without having to download it.

Mobile Web

A mobile website is designed for use on smartphones and tablets. While similar in look and feel to the regular version of the website, its layout and navigation are simplified to ensure a more user-friendly experience on smaller touch-screens. When a mobile user accesses a URL through their phone’s web browser, thanks to adaptive or responsive design, the site detects the device and redirects them to the mobile version of the site.

Quixey’s Consumer Mobile Survey revealed that 49.7% of respondents dislike using mobile apps because they chew up device storage (26.1%) or they are slow and have inconsistent performance (23.6%)—lending credence to their position that mobile web is better. What’s more 66.4% prefer to use the mobile web because they have access to all content in a single place (32.5%), they don’t need to install anything new (23.3%) and they don’t need to flip between multiple apps (10.6%).

Do Projections Edge Out A Winner?

How people are spending their time on their devices may give another clue into their preferences for app vs. web. According to the Quixey report, smart device users spent 3 hours, 5 minutes a day in mobile apps in 2015, and that’s up from 2 hours, 51 minutes in 2014. They estimate users will be in mobile apps for 3 hours, 15 minutes per day in 2016. Mobile web browsing, on the other hand, has been holding steady at 51 minutes a day—and researchers don’t expect this number to rise significantly, if at all.

Quixey concludes that when it comes to apps “We need to create an ecosystem that is not so severely tied to the app, but tied to the dynamic, real-time information people rely on to get tasks done.”

That means that consumers will gravitate toward whichever method provides a better user experience. They need the flexibility, convenience, and access to the functionality to do what they want to do on their mobile devices. How this will play out in the “ecosystem” may differ among industries—consumer preferences for purchasing groceries or shoes may not be the same as those for reading the news, researching vacations, or making connects on social media sites. It all depends on what they’re doing, doesn’t it?

For more stats and insights, visit PYMNTS.com’s Mobile Users Split On Apps Vs. Web Browsers.