I was trying to watch a show on a paid streaming service through my phone, but the webpage doesn’t let me use my browser, I have to download an app to run a video. Which got me thinking “why?” What is a good reason they won’t let me watch using my browser and would force me to download an app?
P.S. I can’t login right now, that’s why downloading the app is so inconvinient
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User data, they want your data! Its all about you and kind of about them being able to say “Check out our cool new app! 1 Million people have downloaded it!” So its forcing you to be their marketing tool too.
A few different factors can contribute.
* Web browsers limit what websites can do, for security reasons. Native apps have fewer (but also different) restrictions. For example, a banking app can use biometric sensors to log you in. A website doesn’t have access to that.
* Technically subset of above but worth pointing out separately: easier to track users for advertising purposes because you have access to more identifiers.
* Every web browser is a *liiiiiitle* bit different. Except for the ones that are fuckballs-different. This is annoying to develop for and unreasonable to test. If you’re doing anything fancy (e.g. drawing a map), you have to invest an unreasonable amount of resources in cross-browser testing. App development can be cheaper.
* They already built a desktop program, easier to port it to a mobile app than a website.
* An app has a shortcut. Makes it easier to convince users to come back. Free advertising, really, every time they open their phone to check the weather.
There’s a lot of research that says that users spend most of their time on phones in apps, not on mobile web. This research spurred a lot of companies to make apps, because that sounded like the way to get usage time. Subsequent research revealed that all that time spent in apps was just in the small number of popular apps (social media/messaging primarily) and not in your terrible pizza ordering app.
An app user is more likely to choose your company over competitors, so that “lock in” is another likely point of value. But it’s hard to tell cause from effect for those users: did downloading the app make them heavy users, or did only heavy users get the app?
I think a surprising amount of corporate strategy is just doing what everyone else is doing and hoping you don’t lose market share.
Yep this is why I hate smart TV’s!!! let me just use a browser. So impossible to get a tv that isn’t smart and yet I still have to hook up my computer to it if I don’t want to use an app or trying to go to a site that doesn’t have an app.
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