MBA1155 Q&A Wednesday: I’m launching a web app. Do I also need to have a mobile app to go with it?

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Hey O welcome to the Hundred Doll RMBA show your business questions answered every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online and today's episode is a Q and A Wednesday episode. On our Q and A Wednesday episodes, I answer a question from you, one of our listeners. If you have a question you want to ask, just email me over@omarr.net Today's question is from Derek and Derek asks, I'm launching a new web app. Do I need to launch a mobile app with it? Good question Derek. And congrats on launching your new app. A web app is exactly what it sounds like, a application that works on the web through a browser, whether that browser is on a desktop, a laptop, a tablet, or a browser through a mobile device. A mobile app is an app that you are familiar with on your mobile device, right? It's an app specifically made for mobile and many apps like Facebook and Airbnb and mailchimp and Intercom, they have both web and mobile apps. But if you're starting out, is it imperative you have both when you launch? Well, we get into the nitty gritty and find out yes or no for your particular situation? If yes, what do you do about it? If no, maybe down the line you'll need it. How do you have an interim solution until you have the ability to get that mobile app up and running? We're getting into all that in today's episode. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. So Derek is launching a new web app and wants to know, does he have to launch a mobile app with it? Well, we're going to go through a series of questions to find out if he does. This is the same series of questions I went through when we were launching Webinar Ninja, our web app. So let's start with question number one. How will your users interact with your application? Let's take mailchimp, for example. Email marketing software. People use mailchimp to send out newsletters, to create email campaigns, to send out automations. If I were going to send a newsletter to my email list, I would probably sit down on my laptop and do that. I'm dragging and dropping pictures, I'm typing. I need to see it in a larger screen. Maybe you would use an iPad or a tablet, but most likely not a phone. So in this case, I really don't need a mobile app. I can run my app through a browser with my laptop, my desktop, or even my iPad. But if I'm an application like Facebook, where 67% of my traffic comes from mobile, a mobile app makes total sense. I'm all about social media. People are posting photos that they just took right on Facebook. They're commenting. So mobile is imperative in order for me to grow as a company if I'm Facebook. So how will your customers interact with your app? Number two, how complicated is your app? If it's a simple app with simple ui, you can actually get away with just making sure your app is responsive. This is the same thing as going to a website on your phone. And you'll see that the website will change all the formatting to make it look nice. If you don't know what responsive means, it's no problem. Your designer and your developer will know what it means. And often a simple app on the web will will look just as good on a phone if you make sure it's responsive. If you have a more complicated application with several menus and all these different types of things and features, something like a mailchimp, then the responsive route may not be an easy fix. Now, having a mobile app is always a plus. Why? Because one, it's going to open up a New audience. People are going to find you through the App Store, whether it's Apple or Google Play or I should say Android Store. And they're going to learn about your app through different mediums. But you need to plan for it. You don't need to drop a whole bunch of cash. Make sure you have a good proof of concept with your web app. People enjoy it, you're growing, you're profitable, and then you can build your mobile app after if it's not imperative. The second thing I want to mention is that when you move on and build your mobile app, you don't need to have all the bells and whistles. You don't even have to have your app do every single thing that, that your web app does. It could just be the bare essentials at the start. And if they want to use a full fledged app, they need to go on the web on a browser. Remember, when you're building a mobile app, it's not just a simple add on. It's not like adding a page to your website. It's like building a whole different app. Yes, you're going to be borrowing elements and code from your actual web app, but you need a mobile app developer. You need your designer to do the mobile app design. You're going to need someone to maintain the mobile app that's different from your web app. You're going to need somebody to make sure that you answer questions and comments on the App Store. So plan accordingly. When you open up that door, you're having other responsibilities fall on your lap. So make sure you have a plan and you can delegate those tasks to somebody. Also in that plan is the ongoing costs for maintaining this app and obviously promoting your mobile app. Now this is not applicable to Derek and his situation, but I, I would encourage you to take a look at your application in general, if you're listening and maybe you have a mobile only app. An app like Uber really doesn't need to be a web app at all. It just needs a website to promote its products. Whether it's Uber the ride sharing app or Uber Eats, those apps exist on the mobile and you really don't need it on the web. So the reverse may be your situation. So take a close look at what your app is and how it serves your customers.

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But to wrap up today's lesson and answer Derek's question about having to create a mobile app when you create a web app, follow the questions that I just outlined today. Really, it's all about how your customers use your actual app, what's absolutely necessary, and one of the best ways to find out how they use your app is to launch your web app first and take a look at how people get to your actual app, how they use it. Go to your Google Analytics and take a look at all the pages inside your app. Is it coming from a desktop or is it coming from a mobile? If it's the vast majority desktop, you're good to go and you can build that mobile app later down the line. If it's vice versa, you may just need to build that mobile app. All right, that's it for me today guys. Thank you for listening to the Hundred Dollar MBA show. If you have a question you want to ask, just email me over at omar@100mba.net Before I go, I want to leave you with this. When you're building your business, especially when you're bootstrapped, when you're self funded, you need to take things in steps, see what works and build upon what's successful. Dropping a lot of money on things you don't know will be successful or not is not the best idea when money's tight. So in this situation, you're launching the web app first, taking a look at the success, seeing if it's a product that people resonate with and then move on and grow that business. And then you can add on things like mobile apps. Even the big guys do this. When Google launched Drive Sheets, Docs, all that stuff, they did it on the web first and once it started to grow and there was a response, they made a mobile app for it. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take.

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