Apps are cool. But sometimes you don't need to make one.
As a co-founder at Crew (http://crew.co) and before that when I was an independent designer, I'd often get the question from potential clients, "Should I make an app, website, or both?"
This answer might seem simple on the surface. Mobile. Mobile first. Mobile is the future.
While mobile might seem like the obvious choice today because of how it's changing the world, building an app might not be best decision for your particular situation. Granted, down the line a mobile app may make sense. I don’t discount where technology is headed. But a mobile app might not be where you need to start.
The decisions depends on a variety of factors like your long-term goals for your idea, your features, and your budget, etc. Thinking through all these variables can make the decision cloudy.
To help make it easier to consider the tradeoffs between building an app or website, we made this tool called (perhaps, unsurprisingly) App vs Website.
It walks you through a few 'yes' or 'no' questions and in a minute, you have an answer.
If you're planning on starting an online product or business, I hope this helps give you a better idea if you should start by building an app or a website.
If you have any thoughts, I'll be around today to hop in on any comments. And if you took time to take a look at this today, thank you.
P.S. - If you're curious, here's a behind-the-scenes look at how we made appvswebsite.com: http://backstage.crew.co/announc...
@twalling Good point Tim. Ya, looks like, there's a bug on that result. There should be a description displayed there rather just the recommendation to build an app (screenshot: http://www.gomoodboard.com/board...). Thanks for the heads up.
Love the concept.
When I was advising startups at an incubator this was a hot button topic. Everyone wanted to build an app, but failed to realize the additional overhead needed to maintain across platforms, OS, and even screen size.
With all the tools out there a website is remarkably easy (and cheap) to build as an MVP for validation; and will help you refine the experience before porting to a native app. What's more is that you could easily build a web-app that wraps decently on a mobile device as a simple first step (if launching on Android - if it's an iPhone build native. iPhone users are way more picky on experience!)
@adamscochran Thanks Adam. Great point.
Ya, we tried to include every question in there that a founder/business should ask themselves before dropping $20k-$100k on an app.
Depending on your business, there might be an easer, cheaper, and faster way.
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So many people ask me this question. I am glad I can finally point them to a resource instead of having to go through the whole conversation.
@davidjchie Thanks a lot David for checking it out
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Very cool tool built by an awesome team that will help many. Good work guys! We've started to work with Crew, and one of the main aspect that I like is that clients are well informed about what they actually need/can afford. That tool will help to streamline a good chunk of the early discussions.
An awesome tool - Guys you nailed it! I just went further and added 10 questions to decide whether or not develop a mobile app or website/web app http://brainhub.eu/blog/2016/03/...
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