I have been asked many times about the differences between native and hybrid apps. There are many confused IT and Ecommerce professionals out there struggling to determine how to approach their mobile app. If you’re confused and wondering whether to build a hybrid mobile app or a native mobile app, don’t worry, this article will help you decide your mobile app strategy!
Native Mobile Apps
Native mobile apps are tailor-made for each operating system and tend to be more costly and take a little longer to deliver than their hybrid counterparts. However, native apps support complex graphics and intuitive features and can utilise the full potential of each platform, making for a better user experience.
Hybrid Mobile Apps
There are several types of hybrid app with different variations of web and native code. The most common hybrid mobile apps are built through web code being augmented with native SDK. They can be deployed across multiple platforms and tend to be the cheaper and faster solution, but this comes with the risk of a slower and more disjointed user experience.
Cost
The first question to ask yourself is how much budget you have to allocate to your app development. Developing separate native apps for each major platform (Android and iOS) is more costly, but makes for much better performance and user experience. If your budget is very restricted you might want to opt for a hybrid approach.
Speed to Market
If you want to launch your mobile app quickly with limited resources, it may be better to go with a hybrid app approach, which will help to launch your app on multiple platforms in a short time. If you have a little more leeway in terms of time, a native app may be the best solution. To give you some perspective, it usually takes us on average 12 weeks to develop a new transactional native app for each platform. We have created our own app frameworks for iOS and Android that form the core of all of our apps and save development time and foster consistency across platforms. The logic between the two platforms is consistent but they are written for each platform to deliver the best possible performance.
Features
Another question to ask yourself is how feature-heavy your app will be. Native apps are much more able to handle complex graphics and features, while hybrid apps work better for content-heavy and feature-limited apps. With native apps, you can tailor the look, feel, navigation, and gestures of the app to the specific platform. These options are limited with hybrid. When hybrid apps attempt to offer the same features as native apps, they tend to be jumpy and slow. This causes user dissatisfaction.
Performance & User Experience
If your goal is to create an excellent user experience, the native app approach would be better. A hybrid app can never match the level of creative user experience that comes with a native app. Even the best hybrid apps are conspicuously slower than native apps because they rely on the mobile web. In an industry where user experience can make the difference between a satisfied or a frustrated customer, slow response times can prove detrimental to retail apps. Native mobile apps will always be a step ahead in terms of performance and overall experience because hybrid just doesn’t look or feel as smooth or as natural.
Multiple Platforms
The biggest benefit of hybrid apps is that they can be deployed across iOS and Android without requiring separate development. However, only about 70% of code developed using hybrid solutions is reusable between platforms, meaning that in most cases at least 30% of the code requires development time in order to be platform-specific.
Updates
If you need to make weekly updates to your app that would force native app users to update from the App Store regularly, then you should consider a hybrid app. The biggest advantage for hybrid apps is that unless you have an integral change to of the functionality in the app, all the content will be updated from the web directly. But bear in mind, our native apps can be modified to a certain degree without requiring user updates.
My Perspective
Ultimately your users won’t know whether your app is native or hybrid. They care whether they can easily and seamlessly browse and purchase products. Retail apps require high performance and smooth user experiences, which means that a hybrid approach may lead to poor user uptake and negative reviews, adversely affecting your brand. In order to generate the most users and revenue, retail apps need to offer features and functionality that make users want to download and use them regularly. Native mobile apps will always have the edge over their hybrid cousins, but they are not for every use case.
If you are still unsure which type of app would be best for your business, feel free to get in touch at info@nn4m.com.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]