Responsive Web Design vs. Mobile Web App: What’s Best for Your Business?

Author: Sandip Khawadkar

The evolution of smart phones has truly revolutionized the face of digital marketing and therefore the question remains what’s best for your business: responsive web design or mobile web app?

To find out what’s right for you, let’s first understand both:

Responsive Web Design:

Simply put, a responsive web design company will design your website in such a way that the website adapts to the screen size, operating system and orientation of the user’s device.

Advantage of using responsive web design:

  • Users will have a seamless web experience irrespective of the devices they may use. Responsive web development ensures that your users get the same feel whether they access your website from a desktop, tablet, or a smart phone of any size.
  • Better page rank with a single website
  • Economical and easy to maintain. You need to maintain just one website.
  • Better control over your website

Responsive web designs are best suited for:

  • Content centric sites such as blogs and corporate websites
  • News sites or media sites that scroll from up to down
  • Maps, images where the users can adjust the image on the screen for better viewing

With that said, let’s now take a look if mobile app development will suit your business:

Mobile Web App

In addition to your normal website, you get a separate website designed from an app development company, specifically for the tablet and smart phone users.

Study undertaken by Flurry Analytics reveal that the time spent by smart phone users on mobiles apps vis-à-vis time spent by people on desk tops and laptops. That makes it having mobile web app almost mandatory for people who aspire to reach out to wider bracket of audiences.

Advantages of Mobile Web App

  • Gives the smart phone users and tablet users enhanced experience such as rich look, better viewing of videos, better readability and offline browsing
  • Enables catering to a wider audience as more and more users are surfing net through smart phone and tablet devices.

With that said, let’s summarize and see how each of the website version fares in a comparative statement:

Comparative Analysis

1. Development Cost:

The cost of developing a responsive web page is higher as compared to mobile app development. More the number of pages, higher will your responsive web designing cost.

2. Maintenance Cost:

Although the initial cost is high, maintain a responsive website is fairly simpler and cost effective, as you need to do

3. Time Factor:

Owing to the complexities involved, it takes more time to develop a responsive web design than a mobile app.

4. User experience:

The user experience will be much better on a mobile app than on a responsive web design. However, research indicates that people prefer using mobile browser of a responsive website than using an app, while navigating from a mobile app is much easier than through the browser.

Conclusion

There is no one right answer for this. Whether you will benefit from a responsive web design services or mobile app development will largely depend your business needs.