this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
444 points (97.2% liked)

Ask Lemmy

26959 readers
624 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Seriously. I don't want to install something on my phone when the dev is just using a WebView, if that's what it's called. When the app is basically just a website with the browser hidden.

What's the reason for that? To attach the customer? To sell the app for money? Is there more ad revenue that way? Do you reach more people?

(Are there any good reasons for it, too? Security, maybe?)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 40 points 10 months ago (2 children)
  • the free ad space on your home screen. Sure it's a small ad, but you see it all the time.

  • notifications. Even if only a small fraction of users allow them, it's a lot of free advertising. And yes, you can put notifications on websites, but that's not as reliable or as expected as native app notifications.

  • permissions. The more legitimate apps may provide some sort of additional functionality that their website can't provide on its own. The shadier ones sell the data they get from the sensors all over your phone.

  • data storage. Technically web storage is a thing, but it's definitely not something you want to hang your whole business on right now.

  • integrations. You can integrate, for example, Google Pay/Apple Pay on a website, but it's more of a hassle. In an app, it's practically drop-in. Same with the share functionality.

  • why not? If you already have a mobile site and can make an app from it reasonably easy, there's no reason not to. You've become multi-channel with no extra work.

There are probably other reasons, but those are the ones that make sense to me, being in the industry.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Excellent points. I'd just add one more: user friendliness. The average user prefers to click on an icon on their screen, rather than open a Web browser and either type in the URL or access bookmarks, which tends to be rather clunky on a phone.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Great observation. Yes, absolutely.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Also capabilities. Some things are a hassle that doesn't always work as expected (e.g. camera) and some things are just not possible at all (NFC). Even your airline app that simply shows a barcode that you scan at the gate will want to increase display brightness while it's doing so and be able to show you a notification when you have delay or gate change...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Indeed. I called this "permissions," but "capabilities" is a much better word for it