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by bcarroll22 3205 days ago
Here's what I've realized lately. Our product is for teachers (K-6 mostly) who tend to not be very techy. They use phones, tablets, etc. to the extent that they need to. We spent TONS of time optimizing our website for mobile. At one point it was a PWA that was very optimized and had like a 95 lighthouse score (not anymore because of finicky SW behavior). They didn't care one bit. Like, not even one little bit. To them, it was annoying that it wasn't "an app".

I don't think this battle is one of "build good enough mobile web experiences", it's more "convince non-techy users that a good mobile web experience is good enough for you in x% of cases." For us who read HN, we're jaded on apps, installs, 100mb of storage wasted. For the less techy world, they don't feel the pain we do, and that will continue to be a problem.
1 comments
kilburn 3205 days ago
This doesn't match my experience. I've recently built an "intranet" website for some consukting agency. They had an IOS app already, but no android app. I built them a SPA based on create-react-app with a material design look and feel, making sure it worked fine both on desktops and on phones (which also means changing how certain things are presented, not just scaling the same screens). I told them to try the "add to start screen" link on chrome mobile (or the equivalent in IOS safari)... they ended up ditching the IOS app altogether.

All in all, it depends hugely on the functionalities your app/web provides, and whether you can build an experience that is app-like enough or not...

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bcarroll22 3205 days ago
I guess probably just fundamentally different experiences. We couldn’t have afforded to put any more time into optimizing for mobile, but most users I talked to didn’t even care to look at the mobile site before insisting they couldn’t use it unless it was an app. No need for push notifications, camera, anything like that—heck we even put in the iOS add to home screen stuff to try to get them to see it as more “app” like—but still, they just insisted an app straight from the App Store was necessary.
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