Apps became popular in the early days of ios and android for a few reasons.
Network speeds at the time were slower so you could save a lot of loading time by downloading the “app version” of a product and essentially having all of the images and media essentially preloaded to a device.
Hardware was a lot weaker in those early days of smartphones by a large margin so it also helped to have an optimized version of your website even if that website was something that was otherwise basic. If you had social features there was also the benefit of better integrated notifications(which browsers have now but didnt back in 06/07). Also the internet of the mid to late 00s was riddled with mouse centric hover menus, and Flash multimedia and this was not mobile phone friendly.
Then there is just marketing. Theres an app for that! Its funny that ios traps people in so thoroughly into not using another message app than what’s built in when the early days of the iphone were marked with downloading and exploring all kinds of different apps. Android emulated this approach and even before advertisers and businesses realized they could lock users in and track everything they did there was a rush to make apps simply because smart phone users wanted apps. I remember working customer service for a website years ago and our site worked fine on mobile and I had some customers complain because “apps are the future” and its like I dont see why you’d need a purpose built app for this one site, and for our many faults our mobile experience is actually pretty solid!
Of course after all was said and done there was a revelation made by the new age era of social media and web development. You could use dedicated apps as a way to track people to sell advertising dollars and also make it easier to keep them captive specifically on your service. Afterall they arent even using a browser to access your stuff theyre using your app to access your service, and get notifications, and get custom tailor made advertising and content and stay on your app forever and ever and ever.
Apps became popular in the early days of ios and android for a few reasons.
Network speeds at the time were slower so you could save a lot of loading time by downloading the “app version” of a product and essentially having all of the images and media essentially preloaded to a device.
Hardware was a lot weaker in those early days of smartphones by a large margin so it also helped to have an optimized version of your website even if that website was something that was otherwise basic. If you had social features there was also the benefit of better integrated notifications(which browsers have now but didnt back in 06/07). Also the internet of the mid to late 00s was riddled with mouse centric hover menus, and Flash multimedia and this was not mobile phone friendly.
Then there is just marketing. Theres an app for that! Its funny that ios traps people in so thoroughly into not using another message app than what’s built in when the early days of the iphone were marked with downloading and exploring all kinds of different apps. Android emulated this approach and even before advertisers and businesses realized they could lock users in and track everything they did there was a rush to make apps simply because smart phone users wanted apps. I remember working customer service for a website years ago and our site worked fine on mobile and I had some customers complain because “apps are the future” and its like I dont see why you’d need a purpose built app for this one site, and for our many faults our mobile experience is actually pretty solid!
Of course after all was said and done there was a revelation made by the new age era of social media and web development. You could use dedicated apps as a way to track people to sell advertising dollars and also make it easier to keep them captive specifically on your service. Afterall they arent even using a browser to access your stuff theyre using your app to access your service, and get notifications, and get custom tailor made advertising and content and stay on your app forever and ever and ever.