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by Supermancho
1450 days ago
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You're subtly conflating "native app" vs "app" by using slightly different terminology. For the purposes of being exact, I'll assume you mean "app" - regardless if it's a hybrid with a webview or pure native apis. > Users rarely, if ever, install apps My local car wash now has an app and my wife promptly installed it, because of some vague rewards tracking. The vast majority of mobile usage is through apps. That's a fact. This is primarily because of the low bar to adoption (click a link from a QR code/click an icon) paired with the expectation that the experience will be better than a website. If the previous website experience was bad, it's almost an instant conversion (hence the prompts to "install the app" before the user might find the web UI too problematic). Mobile users prefer apps (and probably trust them more) than the browser, on a mobile platform. You can say it's baseless supposition, but that's ignoring the existing evidence that companies have done (and continue to do) over the last decade. Find any company or data that contradicts that and a lot of people would be interested to see it, because nobody has for almost a decade. I can't be sure why you think that someone would consider the web to have a better experience/UI, but it doesn't matter. |
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It's not a conflation, it's intentional because it is what the parent poster claimed. I agree that there is more to it.
> My local car wash now has an app and my wife promptly installed it, because of some vague rewards tracking.
Your wife's anecdote doesn't match industry trends
https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/25/majority-of-u-s-consumers-...
I can also match with anecdotes of users intentionally avoiding the app in favor of the mobile site for linked in, Reddit, etc, despite the constant intentionally of crippling the mobile web experience simply because the app is so invasive. Can I have access to your contacts for no good reason? Btw, we also snoop your clipboard. Basically, I want to take over your phone so you can see a message...
App store conversion rates are low. If you do get it installed many users only use it once. Most people just won't pay for apps, various reasons but the race to the bottom and feeding off user data and eyeballs has pretty much had a full cycle now.
If you are a company trying to get off the ground with a software product these are tough trends to fight.