Doing Mobile Development Right

Written By Shawn Strayer, Web
Developer at Rockton Software 

The first step in doing mobile right is determining what mobile means to your organization. Mobile comes in many shapes and sizes and each approach comes with a near dizzying array of benefits and limitations. In the Age of the Customer  there is an expectation that your organization is accessible at any time on any device and how you meet those expectations will depend on many things including (but not limited to): budget, delivery time, and development skill sets. The lowest cost of entry involves the creation of a mobile friendly version of your website.

Mobile Website

Advantages:

• Ease of Development: Since this technology is server based there is no need to deploy onto client devices and you will most likely be able to leverage much of the content on your existing website. It is also easier to acquire developers with skill sets for this type of development.
• Ease of Maintenance: Since this approach is server-based you can easily deploy updates and have the changes reflected immediately without the need for client updates.
• Broader Reach: Unlike a mobile application that is targeted at a specific platform, the mobile website will be accessible across many devices using a standard browser.
• Familiarity: Users are familiar with using search engines to find your website and the user experience is similar to that found on most websites.
• Less Expensive:  There is a much lower investment in both time and money with this approach versus creating applications that are platform specific.

Limitations:

• Since this is a server based approach offline capabilities are limited.
• While website capabilities are constantly increasing, you usually cannot offer as rich of a user experience compared to a custom application.
• You are unable to take advantage of processing power and features that the mobile device is capable of. 

Custom Application

Advantages:

• Offers offline capability since the application is installed on the client mobile device.
• The user experience is much richer and interactivity is stronger than what is offered by a website.
• You can take advantage of processing power and features of each mobile device platform. 

Limitations:

• Difficulty of Development: It is exceedingly difficult to find developers with the skillset for multiple mobile device platforms and testing time is much greater since you need to either run an emulator or deploy to a client device.
• Difficulty of Maintenance: Updating custom applications is much more difficult since you will need to update the application for each platform and the user must download and install your updates.
• Narrow Reach: Unlike a website, which can be found using common search engines and run across platforms, your application will only be available from an app store location and only for the platform for which it was designed.
• More Expensive:  There is a much higher investment in both time and money with this approach versus creating a mobile website since the application will be platform specific and require exponential effort for development, debugging, testing, and deployment.

Doing mobile development right requires understanding the needs of your organization and ensuring that you allocate resources to the right solution. If your primary objective is to reach a broad audience with a marketing or information distribution intent, then a mobile website is probably the best option. However, if you want a rich, interactive and engaging experience with a specific mobile platform, then a custom application might be a better approach.

Rockton Software wishes to eventually create a mobile friendly version of our website (www.rocktonsoftware.com).

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