An app is far more than a watered-down website. Apps have so much more potential and usage than this. Here we highlight the unique features of an app as opposed to a website.

An Entity of its Own

For the majority of businesses, your website should be your main interest point for online activity. Despite the skyrocketing use of mobile devices to access the internet, a lot of people still gravitate back towards a desktop device to make their purchase after perusing on their mobile device. Knowing this, you can begin to understand how an app doesn’t have to be a watered-down version of your website. It can be a branded entity of its own that has strong and apparent links to your company but serves its own purpose. To put this into context, an online womenswear shop may see most of their purchases made through their desktop website; but they could have an app that works as a catalog of their clothing stock and can alert users of their app with push notification(s) should they get in new stock or get an item of clothing restocked, etc.

Push Notifications

Arguably the crux of what sets apps apart from the digital competition is the notion of push notifications. These are direct messages sent to the user of your app on their mobile devices which then appear on the home screen (and the lock screen) and are simply impossible to ignore. Due to this, even if a person has not been using your app in a while or has not had the need to think about your business recently; you literally thrust your business name and message back into their consciousness with a push notification. Riding off the coat-tails of this attention-grabbing mechanism, these push notifications can be incentivized and usually inform app users of a special offer or important update that they will want to find out more about.

Uninterrupted contact in a few simple taps

Rather than open your smartphone browser and search for the website of your favorite pizza delivery service, an app lets you call them or even place an order with them using just a few simple taps. Your app can be designed with a simple and clean user interface so that once the app is opened, you can have tap-to-call functionality at the tap of a finger and/or a similarly easy system to pick what you would like to eat and order it. A useful facet that projects over this also is the fact that if your app does not have advertising on it, those who use it are in a space uninterrupted with different ads and distractions in their way. They are dealing directly with you.

Ireland Web Design has expert app designers on their team to help you launch and implement an app that will drive customers and sales to your business. Get in touch with us to get an app designed that is as easy or as complex as you would like as a powerful and effective extension of your online and branding presence.