Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

atrium.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

561–570 of 587 posts

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#561

Post by bostik »

rixrax wrote: post #216
wvenable wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many websites ever get passed the signup stage? I often will leave as soon as I'm tasked with creating an account and I'm not likely to come back.

What is especially frustrating that many sites don’t allow Mailinator and other similar ‘one-time’ email systems to be used for registering an account. No way I am going to give you my email address up front before seeing the product. Now the solution is of course to have a separate gmail account to register. Most sites still allow user+site@gmail.com address syntax so that I can sometimes see who are leaking where.…

> I would be curious to know if there is some credible A/B testing showing that for a relatively unknown new product blocking Mailinators and it’s kin somehow results as a better conversion?

Well, there's always this: https://articles.uie.com/three_hund_million_button/ -- trigger warning: that page has annoying delayed-by-few-seconds modal popup that begs you to subscribe and, incidentally, hand out your email address; the irony must have been lost on their marketing folks.

Unless your business is REQUIRED[×] to have user details on file, putting any kind of friction on the user's action path is equal to voluntarily giving up sales. No, I don't want yet another account on your shitty website, no matter what it sells to me. If I end up coming back often enough, then I may, voluntarily, create an account. But if your site requires to create one up front, I'm incentivised to take my business somewhere else.

The worst offenders try to do email domain TLD matching against country of residence. I've seen it only twice, but it's such a user-hostile pattern that it has seared itself to my memory (while mercifully having relieved me of the memory of where I ran into it).

×: cough gambling, financial services, insurance, etc.

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#562

Post by mmmbob »

naravara wrote: post #188
endorphone wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've been hearing the same pitch for literally years. Heck, I've made some of them myself: "This is it, people! Native apps have been rendered unnecessary!" No PWA competes with a native experience. Not performance wise, not usability wise, and ultimately for the developer not even development wise. It may still make a lot of sense, and there are a lot of arguments for web apps, but the enthusiasm in this discussion…

>No PWA competes with a native experience. Not performance wise, not usability wise, and ultimately for the developer not even development wise. How much of a usability advantage does an app for, say, IMDB offer that the regular website doesn't? Or the loyalty card apps that a lot of grocery stores and coffee shops use now? A lot of apps on the market are functionally just wrappers put around a poorly optimized websi…

You're missing the point. A mobile app isn't for the benefit of the user, it's for the benefit of the analytics and marketing teams. They want to be able to know who's engaging with it, and spam them with notifications.

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#563

Post by swah »

skilled wrote: post #555
ravenstine wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to agree with you, but how many people are regularly surfing the web? I actually think most people still are, but I keep getting this impression from HN and others in the tech industry that "everyone is on their phone and using apps", and I've yet to see any convincing research into the use of web browsers over the years. I don't know what I'm really supposed to think, but it seems that a lot of us in the indu…

For the life of me I cannot imagine how painful it must be to spend your time only in apps like Reddit and Instagram. That sounds painfully boring and isolating. I am the exact opposite as I spend all of my mobile time in the browser. It's a complex study to perform it with any kind of accuracy. And if there's any concrete studies done this already then I would love to see citations.

How do you start your browsing day? I always start from the twitter or reddit app. Most people don't even know the "web", they just stay on Whatsapp, Instagram and Facebook the whole day. (I wish this wasn't the case since this makes so difficult to little people to compete on the space).

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#564

Post by menckenjr »

ransom1538 wrote: post #105
shams93 wrote: post #2

Given the fact that most people are already maxed out on apps on their device with just things like facebook and youtube, you're going to be hard pressed to get people to install your app just to try it out. With a progressive web app if they like your app they can add it to their device home screen without installing via the app store and without using up space on their device. Also don't need to pay Apple $100 a ye…

After years of experience: 0) Native means you get notifications: APNS, GCM. 1) If you don't go native, you go SEO. SEO is hard.

Native means you also get background processing and access to things like geolocation and camera feed w/o needing a plugin.

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#565

Post by devocracy »

ghostly_s wrote: post #387
distant_hat wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given how well known user+site@gmail.com is wouldn't many sites simply strip the +... part before selling the email data?

Why would they care enough to do so?

If I get a marked as spam notification, I'll strip anything after the '+' (and really any special characters that distract from the raw email address) to make sure I never send an email to the address again.

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#566

Post by pjmlp »

mikece wrote: post #284
freehunter wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run a website where I get asked quite often to make it into a mobile app, and I reply by showing how to add it to the device's homescreen and not need an app. Never ever ever in the few dozen times I've had this conversation has anyone ever actually done it. In fact most responses to that suggestion have been overwhelmingly negative. They want an app, even though it'd just be a wrapper around the site with no added…

Why not just add the ability to list a PWA in the app store? At that point the installation is intentional and the overhead on Apple/Google is minimal... and Apple still gets their $99/year to allow making it easy to put your app's icon on a user's home screen.

Microsoft does this on UWP.

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#567

Post by pjmlp »

choward wrote: post #474
beckler wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think PWAs are still considered more of a novelty. If they really ever catch on, I could see where apple might require you to start hosting some kind of cross-signed cert or something that you can only get from Apple to install/use them.

> If they really ever catch on, I could see where apple might require you to start hosting some kind of cross-signed cert or something that you can only get from Apple to install/use them. And you would find this acceptable? I would find this appalling. Apple can charge for the App Store because over the overhead. It hosts the servers that have to transfer the apps. It runs an App Store to help with discoverability.…

Microsoft does it, if the PWAs are signed, they get full access to UWP APIs, just like any other native app.

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#569

Post by plaidfuji »

swah wrote: post #563
skilled wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the life of me I cannot imagine how painful it must be to spend your time only in apps like Reddit and Instagram. That sounds painfully boring and isolating. I am the exact opposite as I spend all of my mobile time in the browser. It's a complex study to perform it with any kind of accuracy. And if there's any concrete studies done this already then I would love to see citations.

How do you start your browsing day? I always start from the twitter or reddit app. Most people don't even know the "web", they just stay on Whatsapp, Instagram and Facebook the whole day. (I wish this wasn't the case since this makes so difficult to little people to compete on the space).

Not the OP but I strongly favor browser over apps whenever possible. I’m a news junkie so my progression usually goes:

Washington Post (I live in DC), WSJ, NYT, Hacker News, Maybe Facebook, If really bored, will compare Drudge Report / HuffPo / Fox News just to see the extremes,

Back to HN, eventually feel browsing guilt and go do something productive

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#570

Post by apatters »

ravenstine wrote: post #540
casper345 wrote: post #111

80% of apps are uninstalled in the first 10min (especially if they ask for information or creating an account). Once uninstalled very unlikely they will ever install again. In my dev shop, I always advise clients to look into website MVP over apps unless IT IS CRITICAL to the functionality. Websites can always bring back ppl who were initially uninterested. Faster development/instant updates. Better tracking and UX a…

I want to agree with you, but how many people are regularly surfing the web? I actually think most people still are, but I keep getting this impression from HN and others in the tech industry that "everyone is on their phone and using apps", and I've yet to see any convincing research into the use of web browsers over the years. I don't know what I'm really supposed to think, but it seems that a lot of us in the indu…

I don't think it matters necessarily. It depends on the category your product falls into, and you have to look at how similar products acquire their users.

What software have you purchased in the past year? For my pesonal sample size of one, most of my non-game purchases were business productivity SaaS. And the decision generally happened after repeated exposure via word of mouth and/or discussion forums.

I definitely didn't discover any business productivity software in an app store. And signup that requires any significant amount of information is harder on mobile. I bet SEM and getting customers through Google still works online if you can pull it off.

Post reply on HN