Native Apps: Benefits of Native Technology

Welcome to the second part of our four-part series on mobile apps. In the first installment, we highlighted how apps fit into a digital product portfolio. Now we dive into the benefits that native apps bring to the table.

You may think, “I have a mobile website; why should I bother with a mobile app?” Customers are looking for ease of use and familiar patterns when interacting with brands. Mobile websites often feel like a reduced desktop experience with features and content that may be suppressed due to limitations of screen size. 

Today’s smartphones are the most powerful and technologically advanced devices that most people own. Why should experiences be limited to just what a user can navigate to in their browser? Apps provide access to device features and sensors like Bluetooth, GPS/compass, and biometrics (such as Face ID, Touch ID, and fingerprint readers). Mobile browsers do have access to some of these features, so for the features in the device’s advertisements, you’ll need to head down the native app route. 

Zero and first-party data are more important now than ever with increased privacy scrutiny, and native apps provide unique opportunities for collecting this information. By creating prescribed user flows in your app, you can provide users to save their choices so you can leverage these for personalization in future transactions. In the case of a purchase, customers may want to compare features between items. This data can also be used while  your users complete multistep journeys in your app. 

Take the example of booking an appointment. Not all customers will know exactly what type of appointment they want; even when they do know, it may not be the best for them. By using the information already known, you can present options to fill in the gaps and provide the best appointment type for your customers. 

As device screens become more detailed, users expect an experience that looks and feels like it belongs on the premium device they’re holding. Best-in-class experiences like booking a rental on Airbnb, buying a new outfit on ASOS.com, or scheduling an appointment with Zocdoc can only be achieved using native technologies. The micro interactions and integrations that make these apps special require application protocol interfaces (APIs) that are deeply coupled with the operating system and specific devices. Some frameworks promise to bridge the gap between browser and app, however, these are riddled with compromises that offer sub-par experiences for each platform. Some of these trade-offs include but are not limited to, rendering web-optimized content in wrapper components providing no better of an experience than a mobile website, or leveraging browser APIs to try and emulate native functionality like push notifications or file system access. These frameworks are appropriate for small businesses with limited resources but not for enterprise products. 

Next Time

In the next installment of this series, we’ll explore the differentiating features of mobile apps.

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