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I can totally relate to some of this. If you take a look at Meeker's 2016 Internet trends report that came out last week, you will see that 3 apps dominate 80%
by tmaly 10y ago
I can totally relate to some of this.
If you take a look at Meeker's 2016 Internet trends report that came out last week, you will see that 3 apps dominate 80% of the usage on phones. I decided when I started my food side project a year back, that I was not going to do a native app.
I have been trying to make the front end look better, but I did not want to use very heavy frameworks, so I settled on using the SASS mixin library Bourbon.io along with the grid and a few others the company provides.
The css that is produces is very tight, and I can save on developer costs. I should say, save on finding another front end developer as the one I was using took some money and ran.
- potatolicious 10y agoI don't really see how user time-share is relevant unless your goal is to start a social network/messaging system. 80% of user time is spent in those 3 apps, that doesn't preclude very profitable apps from being developed. After all, people spend 16+ hours a day at home/work, but there are still plenty of reasons to open restaurants. Unless you profit directly from time-spent-in-app this doesn't seem like a consequential measurement. See: Uber, pretty low on the charts for time-in-app but yet a massive business. Ditto Amazon, or GrubHub, or any number of other apps that deliver value to their users (and revenue to their owners) without long sessions.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoTotally agree. The most money I've ever spent is on Tasker and AutoApps family of Tasker plugins, and I rarely even open them - they're the ultimate background apps, but they work, they work well, and they're very much worth the money I paid.
- tmaly 10y agoThere is going to be some reluctance to download a new app. If you can get tons of VC money, and you can pour it into marketing, you can get people to download your app. But I think user adoption is just that much easier if all they have to do is open up your mobile web app in their phones browser. You could always build the app later after you have gotten the traction and growth.
- j1vms 10y agosass+bourbon.io (or similar combos like sass+compass) can help a TON with keep front-end dev costs down. Some apps do benefit a lot being native, but as others point out you throw in the middleman app-store model instead of just dealing with the browser, and keeping your UI simple, clean, efficient and of-course usable.
- briandear 10y agoAgree, but have you ever built a responsive drag and drop document builder? Anytime you start getting into mobile-specific UX on a responsive web page, it often becomes and unpredictable mess. Parallax scrolling isn't the best example, but it is a good illustration. Parallax on mobile browsers historically has been pretty glitchy and horrible. When a similar kind of UX interaction that's actually a necessary part of the app is done in responsive, it's generally very hard. Really the problem with mobile web seems to be JavaScript.
- briandear 10y agoAgree, but have you ever built a responsive drag and drop document builder? Anytime you start getting into mobile-specific UX on a responsive web page, it often becomes and unpredictable mess. Parallax scrolling isn't the best example, but it is a good illustration. Parallax on mobile browsers historically has been pretty glitchy and horrible. When a similar kind of UX interaction that's actually a necessary part of the app is done in responsive, it's generally very hard. Really the problem with mobile web seems to be JavaScript.