Advantages of a Mobile App Over a Website

website vs mobile app

We are living in a mobile era where mobile users are comparatively more than desktop users across the globe. People spend most of their time on mobile applications than browsing over the Internet. Every business nowadays, be it a service provider or a manufacturer is seeing the benefit of moving to mobile devices for their sales, operations, etc.

Amidst stiff competition between businesses, it has become a game of survival for many of them. Sooner or later, mobile app development will acquire the whole market place and work operations. You can either have an interactive mobile app for your business or bid adieu to your customers as they may move to other service providers for a better user experience.

At this time, most of the businesses have at least a working website for their business operations. But the same is not the case with mobile applications. As many established businesses are not leveraging mobile applications for their business growth. For businesses that are into trading or buying-selling, a mobile application is way more beneficial than responsive websites.

Now, you must be wondering-

Why should a business have a mobile application?


What are the benefits of a mobile application over a website?

The advantage of the mobile application over a website:

  • User Preference & Personalization

People use mobile apps more frequently than mobile websites. It has been estimated that a person spends 86% of its mobile phone usage operating mobile apps and the remaining 14% on websites. This makes it clear that mobile applications are more preferred by users because they are easy to use.

All you have to do is tap on the application and it is ready to help you. On the other hand, operating a website is comparatively harder. That is the reason behind the 21% increase in the average time a user spends on mobile apps.

Users love to read the messages and content, tailored according to their preference. Modifying the app content or notification messages as per users’ preferences makes them feel more connected with the app. User-centric personalization takes the regular user experience to an extraordinary level. Personalization includes:

  • Communicating with users in their language to make them feel home
  • Considering users’ interests & behavior
  • Personalization based on location and culture

Note that a mobile application must allow users to define their preference on the app start so that they can access personalized content based on their preferences. By analyzing the choices, engagement, needs, and behavior of the customer, the app will offer custom recommendations to them. After all, it’s not only about personalization but sales too.

Also Read: How to Reduce the Cost of Mobile App Development?

  • Get More Conversions

Mobile applications offer a better way to drive users down the conversion funnel including both top-of-the-funnel (TOTF) users and bottom-of-the-funnel (BOTF) users.

It’s not rocket science to understand that eCommerce applications already have BOTF users, who can be easily converted into customers. Moreover, mobile apps are the best medium to perform targeted marketing through content, features, and utility, tapping specific users into the conversion funnel will be easy.

Also Read: How to Boost Your Sales with Push Notifications? 

  • Supports Offline Mode

The most fundamental difference between a mobile application and website is mobile apps’ capability to potentially work offline in certain situations. Although, at some points, mobile apps require internet connectivity to perform some operations. But it allows users to access basic content and functionalities of the app in offline mode.

For example, a banking app: Needs internet connectivity for banking transactions and offers offline features like tax calculation, installment calculation, loan limit determination, etc. Websites, in contrast, can load web pages via caching that does not need any internet connectivity but offers limited features.

Most of the mobile apps allow instant offline access by tapping on the app icon, on the other hand, mobile websites take a bit longer to load even with an internet connection. A few applications that work both ways online and offline like banking, finance manager, retail, games, news, etc saves a lot of users’ time.

  • Leverage Device Features and Capabilities

Mobile applications are a step ahead from websites as they can utilize the features of the native device such as camera, maps, contacts, etc. By using these mobile features within an app, one can create an amazing, and interactive user experience. Mobile features can be used for multiple purposes like GPS to connect with maps, NFC for transactions, and more. Many applications are using the fingerprint reader feature to prevent unauthorized access to them and users are loving it. This is a great example of securing the user data easily, unlike websites where the user has to remember his password to access their data.

To add more, device features reduce manual efforts by offering assistance in multiple ways. For example, if a user needs to submit his photo on the app, the app will allow the user to capture a picture using the camera feature and submit it within a few clicks.

Another advantage is that device features significantly shorten the time frame users take to initiate and perform an action. Device features fundamentally change the way a user interacts with the device and applications. However, mobile websites can also use some device features like camera, GPS, etc. But still, there are few limitations in terms of both usage and implementation of such features.

Also Read: E-Commerce Mobile App Development Cost & Features

  • Faster Performance & Data Storage

Last but not least, mobile applications perform 1.5 times faster than mobile websites. Mobile apps are always better in speed and performance than websites. The reason is that mobile apps store their app data locally which can be retrieved in split seconds. Whereas websites need to fetch the data from the server for every operation which takes time and depends on internet connectivity. However, there are techniques to store data locally in the browser as well, but the overall implementation is hard to achieve. For example, browsers do not offer a SQL database while mobile apps have access to the SQLite database, which provides a much better interface to store and retrieve the data.

Lastly, websites use JavaScript which is a good & performant language but it can’t beat native apps or even Flutter apps when it comes to performance. Whereas the frameworks used by mobile apps run almost five times faster than a javascript code. In fact, most mobile browsers would crash if the website uses lots of JavaScript operations. This is simply because mobile phones have limited memory and JavaScript does not offer any way to do proper memory management during development.


There are millions of mobile apps available out there and the number is increasing with each day. People are spending more and more time operating mobile apps. Mobile apps and websites have their pros and cons, but always remember that a business should be present where it’s customers are.

Going for mobile app development is more beneficial for businesses as it has higher conversion rates. Along the way, mobile apps offer great personalization, operational efficiency, and other exclusive features. 

So, now is the time to build mobile applications for businesses to leverage the ‘First Movers Advantage’ to sell your products and services before your competitor does.

Increase your business potential, sales, profits, and traffic by developing a custom mobile app for your business. If you want to take your business to new heights, get an app developed by a proficient mobile app development company.