Website APP for iOS and Android

Hi,

Does Nitrosell offer apps for websites? One of my customers wants to create an app for there website.

Thanks
Isaac

Hi Isaac,

About 6+ years ago, apps for smaller retailers were all the rage. At the time, we had a couple of third-party offerings that worked fine with the “NitroMobile” service. However, they have both since gone out of business.

The challenge is that most smartphone users have no interest in installing apps other than for the Internet’s major services. The majority of people use at most 9 different apps per day, and that includes SMS, Email, Alarm Clocks, etc. You can find some more interesting stats here:

The bottom line is that we have recommended against an app-based approach for quite some time. They are time-consuming and expensive to keep up-to-date, you have to worry about development on multiple platforms (iOS App Store and Google Play Store for a start), and then also about compatibility testing with hundreds of different devices (especially on Android), not to mention that every time you make a change to the app, you have to go through the various review processes.

If every NitroSell customer had an app, that would be 1,000 app reviews to get through for every single release, and you can’t have one app that’s the same for everyone because they all need to be branded differently.

A responsive site that works well on mobile, which we obviously do offer, is a far better solution. Changes can be made on-the-fly, different devices can be accommodated through CSS changes, there are no individual, expensive, and time-consuming development processes to support per-store apps, and shoppers can still add bookmarks to web sites to their home screens if they wish.

If you come across a mobile app service you’d like a quote for, let us know. I’d strongly suggest it’s a waste of time: apps work for big brands and the largest online players; for small-to-mid-sized retailers, I firmly believe they are a bad fit and a waste of money.

Regards,
Donogh

First of all, thanks for the quick response. Secondly, I agree with you 100% but my customer keeps on asking so I have to do my research.

Thanks
Isaac

I understand Isaac. We do field this question a couple of times a year ourselves. Let me know if you come across anything interesting!

All the best,
Donogh

@donogh @isaac have you considered doing a PWA (Progressive Web App) wrapper for the site?

I’ve used the technique with wordpress sites I admin to create psuedo Apps (effectively just homepage website links) and the Chrome or Safari browser-based notification protocols can be used to drive re-visits (they’ll appear to anyone with the pseudo app installed as if they are app notifications). That way there is no revision cycle to go through with the App Store or Play Store, all content can be managed through PAM or WSM as normal, and the design is driven by the normal mobile web interface.

The PWA experience is cleanest on Android (a simple “add to homepage” button can be triggered to pop up for visitors), but works reasonably well on iOS too (the pop-up just has to direct them to the correct ‘Add to Homescreen’ option in the share menu).

See Install the Volvo DĂșn Laoghaire Regatta Web App - Volvo DĂșn Laoghaire Regatta

Could be the cleanest solution to keep everyone happy?

1 Like

That’s a great suggestion, thanks @gareth!

What do you think @isaac?

I am not familiar with this but I guess it’s something we can look at. Is there a site I can try on my phone and show the retailer?

This is the one Gareth provided: Install the Volvo DĂșn Laoghaire Regatta Web App - Volvo DĂșn Laoghaire Regatta

We’d be interested in a progressive web app. Just attended a google seminar and they seem to favoring these websites for the google platform and for brick and mortar stores to utilize it for ads and geo fencing. Not that I’m an expert.