Why Your Business Doesn’t Need an App (And What You Should Do Instead)
Nearly twenty years ago, I was attending a malware conference and had the privilege of listening to Walt Mossberg, the legendary lead technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal.
This was right at the dawn of the first modern iPods and the very beginning of the smartphone era. Mossberg was addressing the rapid proliferation of mobile apps and the sudden, overwhelming feeling among business owners that everyone needed one.
At the time, the logic made sense. Most websites weren't mobile-enabled. If you tried to load a site on an early handheld device over a sluggish 3G or WAP connection, it was a disaster—lines of unformatted HTML, missing graphics, and brutal loading times. Most people gave up, went home, and struggled through loading it on their desktop over DSL or dial-up. Apps seemed like the savior.
But Mossberg issued a warning that stuck with me.
Billboards.
He pointed out that a smartphone only has so much memory, and every app you install puts an icon on your screen that constantly consumes device resources. Mossberg likened downloading a single app to letting a company put a billboard in your yard facing your front door. Sure, it might obstruct your view of the street a little, but you could still back out of your driveway safely and enjoy the property you paid for.
However, you were always seeing the content on that billboard—and it was constantly seeing you. We later found out apps were installed so corporations could watch what you do, track your habits, and harvest your data for free on the device you bought.
At the time, people weren't downloading just one app—they were downloading 20 or 30.
Mossberg noted that this was the equivalent of stacking 30 billboards in your front yard. Suddenly, you can’t see the street. You can’t safely back out of your driveway. You’ve surrendered your valuable real estate for free to companies that clog up your device and degrade the very functionality you paid for. Over time, people learned to become far more selective about the apps they downloaded and the data they shared.
Fast forward to today. Technology has evolved dramatically, yet I still have clients ask me during website builds: "Do we need an app for our business?"
Unless your core business is product-related, my resounding answer is almost always: No.
Let's clarify the difference. If you are selling a proprietary utility or service—like a custom logistics tracker, a complex photo editor, or a SaaS platform that requires deep access to native mobile hardware—building an app makes total sense. That app is your product.
But if you are a service business, medical practice, law firm, or local merchant looking to build an app just so people can read your about page, view your services, check your hours, or log into a standard client portal? Building a custom app is a colossal waste of money.
Here is why:
- Modern Websites Are Already Built for Mobile
When Mossberg gave that talk in 2006, converting a website for mobile was a technical nightmare. Today, responsive web design is the industry standard. Modern websites are built on flexible templates that instantly adapt to any screen size—whether it’s an iPhone, an Android tablet, or a desktop monitor—usually with the slide of a button.
Your customers get a seamless, fast, and fully rendered experience without you needing to spend thousands to build two separate platforms.
- The Power of the Mobile Bookmark
Your customers want easy access to your information, but they don't want to clog their storage.
Instead of forcing a user to visit an app store, download a heavy application, and manage endless account permissions, they can simply add a bookmark of your website to their phone’s home screen.
To the user, a home screen bookmark looks and acts just like an app icon. But behind the scenes:
- It takes up virtually zero storage space or memory.
- It will never slow down their device’s performance.
- It doesn't require constant software updates or OS patches.
- It doesn't track their private background activity or harvest data.
- If they ever decide to remove it, they simply delete the icon—no complicated uninstallation process or lingering residual files to worry about.
- Lower Development & Maintenance Costs
Building an app is expensive. Maintaining one is worse.
Whenever Apple or Google updates an operating system, custom apps frequently break, requiring thousands in developer hours to patch. Furthermore, there is always the risk that an update fails to render properly on a customer's specific device model.
When you update a responsive website, those changes automatically populate across every mobile device instantly. You retain total control over how your brand renders, at a fraction of the cost.
The Bottom Line: Respect Your Customer's Real Estate
When Walt Mossberg spoke two decades ago, he was right on the money. Unless you are building an actual software utility that relies on native phone capabilities, a dedicated marketing app does little more than clog up your customer’s phone, eat their memory, and collect data they might not be willing to share.
If you're selling software as a service, build the app. But if you're trying to get customers to engage with your brand, view your work, or hire your team, your money is better spent playing the tables in Vegas or buying swampland in the Sahara Desert.