More and more people are using smartphones and other mobile phones to browse the web, shop online and research products and companies on the internet. With this in mind, many webmasters and web designers are trying to figure out how to best facilitate their users. One of the biggest decisions is whether to use a mobile website or a native app. Check out these pros and cons of each option to help you make up your mind.

Mobile Websites Pros

Reach a larger audience
While the smartphone market is growing many people are still browsing on other mobile phones. You can reach both smartphone owners and users of other mobile phones with a mobile website.

Lower initial costs
Mobile websites can be easily designed and modified to work across a range of platforms. Compare this to the variety of different smartphone operating systems and the costs to design apps for each environment. You also don’t have to worry about sharing revenues.

Quicker time to market
Easier and cheaper design also means you can be up and running more quickly, so you miss out on fewer customers.

Update instantly
When you change your mobile website all users experience the changes immediately.

Mobile Website Cons:

Performance
Native Apps can often perform better than mobile websites, especially on high-powered mobile devices.

Connectivity
User experience can often suffer from poor data connections and data may be lost. Mobile websites can often eat into data allowances more so than native apps.

Native Apps Pros

Better Adaptations to Connectivity
Apps can be designed to minimize the effects of poor or absent connectivity.

Data Caching abilities
A native app can store data on the user’s mobile device so that they use less data overall.

A Better experience
The features of the mobile device can be harnessed by the app so that the app almost seems like a part of the device.

Better marketing
Native apps feature their logo on the users device. You can also build a marketing campaign around the app and its introduction.

Native Apps Cons

Discoverability
Users must seek out and find the app in an app store, and wait for it to be installed before the first use.

Updates
When you make changes to your app users must install the update before they see the benefits.

Cost
You must design and tweak your app to run on various different platforms and environments, which can be costly and take time.