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Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

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Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#371

Post by reificator »

jklinger410 wrote: post #276
reificator wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is it difficult to get someone to install something for a test run when like 90% of app installs are test runs? As I said in my previous post I'm clearly missing something here. Why are those mutually exclusive at all? You're saying that most installations are test runs. That implies people are leery about leaving an app they don't want installed. Why does that mean that it's somehow easy to get users to instal…

>As I said in my previous post I'm clearly missing something here. Why are those mutually exclusive at all? If it was hard to get people to test drive your app, then 90% of app installs would not be test runs. They would be one time permanent installs. >It sounds like they don't want a bunch of apps installed. It also sounds like people are constantly trying new apps, no? Precisely what OP said people do not like to…

> If it was hard to get people to test drive your app, then 90% of app installs would not be test runs. They would be one time permanent installs.

I think you and I have opposite understandings of the same data. You're looking at a high abandon rate after installation and claiming that it represents an increase in customers going out to find apps.

I don't think there's any substantive evidence of this. You have evidence showing that customers have a strict filter on what they keep on their phones. Why does a tightening of one stage of the pipeline have anything to do with a loosening at a previous stage?

There aren't a fixed number of installations that stick, uninstalling an application does not mean the customer will go right back out and install something else.

> I think we both know that I could scour the internet and find 1,000 articles filled with statistics showing that people are constantly installing and uninstalling apps

That people uninstall most apps they eventually do install does not imply a regular stream of new installations.

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#372

Post by qwerty456127 »

ecp9 wrote: post #137

I don't even bother installing apps anymore, I don't have time to research whether or not they are going to abuse my privacy or have some horrendous TOS. I got my core 10 apps and haven't bought a new one in a year.

This doesn't express how a mobile app is essentially worse than a website - it only highlights how apps devs are doing it wrong and how mobile platforms vendors don't do their job preventing this.

Apps vendors should be discouraged from abusing access permissions, users should be warned if they probably do (in a visible and practical way) and be allowed to control them.

When a user clicks to install an app the system shows what rights does the app want and only gives choice to allow everything or just cancel. Instead it should disable everything by default, let the user turn particular permissions on explicitly and still install the app even if the user won't allow anything. It's the app vendor job to handle the cases when app can't access something.

As for TOSes - I doubt I understand why these should even be allowed by a platform. All the reasonable TOS terms are obvious and can be implied: the user can use the app for whatever is not illegal, the vendor can use whatever data the user enters the ways actually needed for the app to do its direct job (+ in non-personalized statistics calculation perhaps) and no other way.

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#373

Post by scarface74 »

sethammons wrote: post #289
onion2k wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On iOS you won’t get notifications or be able to run anything in the background. Ok, but what are the downsides?

Unless I absolutely have to have the app (work or something), I avoid it. Webpage any day. It wont bug me in the middle of the night. 3AM. Sleeping Phone: BING!!! Me: *groggy* shit, hope everything is ok... Me: *picks up phone* Phone: Rayman Adventures has updated! Me: *uninstalls Rayman Adventures, angrily goes back to sleep*

That’s an easy one - set Do Not Disturb to start at 10:00 and end at 7AM. It will still allow messages through for contacts that you specify.

In iOS 12, you can turn off notifications directly from the Notification Center for an app that bugs you.

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#374

Post by laurentl »

sosborn wrote: post #330
syrrim wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add a file input -> the users taps it -> ios asks if they want to use an existing photo or take a new one -> take a new photo. Result on android may differ.

Interesting, they don’t seem to allow this on the desktop browser. Changing the user-agent yo a mobile browser exposes it. What a strange decision.

I don’t use Instagram so can’t check the code, but I would guess they use something like
Which does what you’d expect on a mobile device (launch the camera) but behaves differently on desktops (opens a file upload dialog). They may have decided that this behavior would confuse users.

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#375

Post by geezerjay »

syrrim wrote: post #323
sosborn wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you post a photo on instagram in a web browser? I thought that was reserved for the app.

Add a file input -> the users taps it -> ios asks if they want to use an existing photo or take a new one -> take a new photo. Result on android may differ.

How do you ensure that a client only sees a picture/video once and can't save it?

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#376

Post by muthdra »

gp7 wrote: post #359
rock_hard wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are saying that out of the 3B smart phone users in the world 600M will never install a app ever because they fear the abuse of their privacy or some horrendous TOS? Yeah, no! I think your intuitive judgement failed you here

The claim isn't never--it's for installing a small set of apps that you don't change for more or less the entire lifetime of your device.

Yes. Lurking around the app store of your device and installing random apps is a behavior for first-time users of the platform. Back during 2010 to 2015, almost everyone was a first-time user of the platform. From now on, downloading random apps is a job for ever younger audiences.

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#377

Post by geezerjay »

notSupplied wrote: post #370
geezerjay wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Think of it like this: If Hacker News required a fat client to function on your desktop, would you actually be here at all? HN essentially is a service that provides only a couple of text views to list and read submittions and their discussions, and requires zero processing or interaction. That's hardly a challenging problem that requires a fat client. If however we were discussing an application that required sign…

On mobile, you don't use a fat client for HN? I've even paid money for an app (MiniHack) to have a nicer experience on mobile.

Truth be told, a full blown mobile app isn't needed to tweak the UI or provide different views.

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#378

Post by matte_black »

nybble41 wrote: post #350
matte_black wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is part of standard data cleaning practices. You always remove whatever custom formats a provider allows to get the raw minimum email address (this is only for export, you still send official communication with a user to their original specified address).

There's a simple solution for that: always include a label as part of your address, and treat any mail that doesn't include one as spam.

Not every service even allows you to have a label in your email address. So what then?

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#379

Post by ArtDev »

rock_hard wrote: post #345
sslayer wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with the 99% estimate, I too take the same approach, and recommend the same to those who will listen. I would venture that number to be at least 80%

So you are saying that out of the 3B smart phone users in the world 600M will never install a app ever because they fear the abuse of their privacy or some horrendous TOS? Yeah, no! I think your intuitive judgement failed you here

Perhaps not privacy but the average user might be aware of losing a little battery life for each new installed app.

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#380

Post by stephenhuey »

chaostheory wrote: post #58
egeozcan wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (paraphrasing) No PWA competes with a native experience even development wise I'm personally too spoiled by the React debugging experience, and I'm saying this as a developer who mainly does C#. On the other hand, I know many developers who can't stand a line of JavaScript. The answer is here a huge "it depends, really".

For those who can't stand javascript, typescript was made for you

...and for those who want even more improvement over JS than just TS, there's Dart in the Flutter world.
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