As a conference manager, you may have found yourself asking this question: Why bother with a mobile app when you can use a browser-based app?
That is a question that comes up frequently. Like Evernote and many other app developers, we have chosen to develop what are known as “native apps”, rather than offering browser-based HTML “apps” for mobile lead retrieval.
HTML apps can be developed more quickly and easily. One version can be used on all mobile devices that can access the Internet. A significant amount of time is saved by developing a single app that can be used universally. So what’s the downside?
A native app must be developed specifically for each mobile operating system. One size does not fit all. There must be individual native apps: One for Apple, another for Android, for Blackberry, for Kindle, etc. Costly? Yes. Time Consuming? Yes. Worth it? Yes!!
As Phil Libin, Evernote’s CEO, says, “…people gravitate towards the products with the best overall user experience. It’s very hard for something developed in a cross-platform, lowest-common-denominator technology to provide as nice an experience as a similar native app.”
Browser (HTML) apps make things easy for developers. Native apps make things easy for users. With a native app, for example, an on-line connection is not necessary. For a browser-based app, it is essential. Now, whose life do you want to make easy…your vendor’s or your attendees’ and exhibitors’?
If you are an event organizer, this is a critical distinction. Many, probably most, venues lack reliable Wi-Fi. Even when Wi-Fi is available on a trade show floor, when thousands of attendees and hundreds of exhibitors are vying simultaneously to access it, quality is inevitably going to be degraded. Don’t risk frustrating you attendees and exhibitors by offering browser-based apps.
