We’re very casual with the term “apps” these days. To most people it means a simple little program that runs on the phone and accomplishes a task. “There’s an App for that” has entered our vocabulary as an expression that means its an easy fix. Or let the smartphone do the work for you. But the actual app, and building thereof, can be a little more complicated. Let’s look at the aspects of the approach, building, and maintaining an app that’s right for you and your business.
The Flow from Web to Mobile to App
If we look at a practice website, we have a lot of standard content – home page, bios, patient education – and functions – contact form, watch exercises or patient ed videos. If we build a mobile site, we are basically repurposing the website to display on a phone. We might eliminate some of the wordy parts of the site because mobile users tend to want facts quicker than web users. So on our mobile site we might eliminate doctor and staff bios and “newsy” articles that may even be out of date. We may just elect to present location, hours, insurance, a listing of doctors and specialties, and contact us information. This would make sense for a mobile version of a website, but it has little functionality.
When we start valuing function more, its usually for a reason. Lets say that Dr. Bob has decided he needs to make a video of treatments and conditions he specializes in. He records these and posts them on the website. The mobile version is allowed to see these. Dr. Bob can now tell his patients to go to his website and watch his videos. This is a great thing, and now its available to mobile users as well. But what if Dr. Bob uses this so much that the function of watching the video is so important, and used so often, that it needs to be a standalone piece – Dr. Bob’s Videos. We now have a reason to create an app.
Web or Native
You’d think the next decision for Dr. Bob would be building an app for iPhone or Android – or Windows and Blackberry if you’re really reaching the ends of the earth – but the platform choice begins before that: whether to go Web or Native. Web apps are a hybrid type of website that run on your phone and appear to be an app. Native simply means its written for a specific type of phone, in that phone’s language, and only runs on that type of phone.
Web Apps are not Mobile versions of your site. Their raison d’être (fancy French for reason for being) is to deliver functionality – to solve that simple problem – and little else. Where a mobile website may not have all functions that exist on a regular website, a Web App is only a function or two, not a website. (Disclaimer: there are lots of geeky arguing about this. If your entire site is functional, then your mobile site is a web app, no? We’ll postpone that discussion for another day.)
It’s important to get this distinction understood right away, and determine if you even need an app at all. So lets first look at the differences, pros, and cons of Web apps and Native apps.
Please proceed to the next part of the primer.