Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by pwr1 72 days ago
Yep. If your product needs me to install an app for a one-off thing, you've probably already lost me.

The crazy part is how many teams still treat the web as the demo and the app as the “real” product. For a lot of stuff it's the opposite now.

I know there are edge cases, but most of the time “download our app” just means “please care way more about our product than you currently do.”
1 comments
davebren 72 days ago
>> The crazy part is how many teams still treat the web as the demo and the app as the “real” product.

But that's just the technical reality of what can be implemented on web vs. native because you are within an ephemeral browser tab and have all the restrictions that come with that.

link
pwr1 72 days ago
Native has its place for sure — camera, sensors, offline, background tasks. But web has come a long way and for a lot of products it's genuinely enough. The issue is teams defaulting to "build an app" without asking whether the install friction is actually worth it for what they're building.
link
davebren 72 days ago
The friction is mostly learned helplessness it seems since software is easier to install than ever. But it's there nonetheless and the play store discoverability is pretty much gone, so yeah that's why I can't develop mobile only anymore. As a user, in general if the product is a website then I want a site, and if it's an application I use regularly I want an app.
link