Web presence for businesses
Here in our development dojo we declared “love” to Bootstrap, HTML5 and mobile enabled frameworks for web development. For some of the companies with a website, the mobile approach is still a second thought of internet visibility. If you already have not touched or altered your web presence to be presentable on mobile devices think twice – already the number of phones is higher than of number of PCs. A phone is much more desirable in developing countries than any other form of computing device. The trend is going to accelerate as much as many useful tools are ported to mobile devices:
- payment programs
- news feeds
- video/audio streaming
- instant messaging in any type of form
Mobile presence should be first priority
Another argument about mobile design of the web sites is Google decision for web ranking. Google changed the mobile web ranking of the web sites based on the accessibility from mobile devices.
If the first trend is already imprinted in your digital marketing strategy we suggest another one of the same importance – start designing your web presence with mobile first approach.
What is mobile first approach?
Is the requirement to start designing with the mobile platform as being the main path where you test/deploy and develop. Starting with using CSS and libraries which supports mobile and desktop screens and ending with testing on real devices with different screen sizes and resolutions.
Data provider and as native as possible
What if the mobile application is the main presence of the business – see Twitter, Waze, Instagram, Pinterest scenarios? In this case the examples of companies with millions of users seems to lead towards native development.
We have seen in practice several companies trying to cut corners and development expenses in order to be present on both mobile systems – Apple Store and Google Play. There are several options on being visible on both platforms with (almost) one code base:
- use one of the Javascript frameworks for developing for both eco-systems (iOS anf Android)
- React Native
- NativeScript
- Cordova/PhoneGap
- Sencha Touch
- use Xamarin
The reason to have one code base for both mobile systems stems from time-to-market requirement and the cost. Is it feasible for any application to be developed in Javascript or Xamarin? It depends, but a short answer is:
For web application on mobile or application without much access to the underlying system – access to services, sensors or other platform specific APIs – you can use one code base. For “thick apps” where the design imprint has to rhyme with the underlying system, which allow independent functionality even if there is no internet connection, we recommend to go on the native development path.