Mobile is becoming an increasingly important platform both for entertainment and business today. An ever-increasing number of people use smartphones alone to access the internet, to keep up with the news and social updates, to consume entertainment, to make payments, and to shop.
According to Smart Insights, the number of mobile users accessing going online has exceeded that of desktop users back in 2014, and the gap between the two categories is widening year after year. So, going mobile is more important today than ever.
The first thing that pops into mind for most businesses is to create an app to be closer to their prospective customers. But is this always necessary and justified?
Probably not, and there is a viable alternative to consider – a web app.
Web apps do just fine
Millions of smartphone users worldwide play slot games at a secure online casino destinations day after day.
Online casinos are in a pretty sensitive situation: Apple’s is the only app marketplace that allows them to list real money gaming apps (the Windows Store is irrelevant in this context), but their main market is dominated by Android-powered smartphones.
For lack of a better solution, online gaming venues like the Red Flush Casino have chosen the path of a web app. The Red Flush Mobile offers its users all the features and functions they are looking for – a significant game library, safe and secure connections, and a simple and easy way to handle payments – inside a web browser.
This has allowed the Red Flush not only to reach a wide audience no matter what mobile operating system they use but also to provide its players with a quick, convenient way to use its services.
In the case of many online services, creating a native app is simply overkill. There is no need for the user to install an app to read a blog, for example, especially since the coveted push notifications that keep visitors returning to the website can now be set through a web browser, too.
Besides, web apps are most of the times little more than mobile-friendly websites, which makes them accessible on any device running any operating system as long as it has an internet connection and a web browser.
Why native apps are so popular?
Of course, native apps do have many advantages that make them more popular among service providers.
For one, they are present in app marketplaces – it’s far easier for a user to stumble upon an app in the Play Store than to do the same with a web app in the infinite sea of internet addresses.
They offer a faster, more reliable, and responsive experience, they can access more functions of the device they run on, and the list could go on. They have a few disadvantages, too – they are specific to the platform they are built for, and they cost way more to be built (and maybe twice as much if you want to deploy the same app on multiple platforms).