Mobile app or website: what does your business need first?

"Should we build an app?" is one of the first questions many businesses ask. Sometimes the answer is yes. Often, a well-designed website does the job first, and an app comes later. Here is how to decide.

What a website does best

A website opens from a search, a link or a message, on any phone or computer, with nothing to install. That makes it the right starting point when you want to:

• be found by people searching for what you offer;
• present your company, services and prices;
• take enquiries, bookings or orders from new customers;
• share links on social media and messaging apps.

For many businesses, the first goal is to be found and contacted. That is a website's job.

When an app is worth it

An app lives on the customer's phone. It earns its place when people come back often and do the same things each time:

• frequent, repeated use: ordering again, checking an account, tracking a delivery or an appointment;
• features that work best as an app: notifications, the camera, location, working with a weak connection;
• a service people log into, such as a customer portal or a tool your team uses every day.

If customers would open it once and never again, an app is probably not the first thing to build.

Start with one, plan for both

Many businesses start with a website to be found, then add an app for the customers who return. Planning for both from the start helps: the same design, the same content and the same accounts, so the two feel like one service.

A web application is a middle path: it runs in the browser like a website but works like an app, with accounts, dashboards and tools. It can be the right first step for a portal or an internal tool.

Arabic from the start

For customers in Saudi Arabia, both the website and the app should be designed right to left in Arabic from the beginning, not flipped at the end. See designing a website in Arabic.

What it costs

Websites fit our packages, from ⁦SAR 3,900⁩ for a landing page and from ⁦SAR 9,900⁩ for a business website; an online store starts from ⁦SAR 19,900⁩. Mobile apps and web applications are custom builds: we start with discovery and scoping, then quote the project as a whole. See how much a website costs.

Not sure which you need? Describe what your customers should be able to do, and we will suggest where to start.