Mobile Site or Mobile App: Which is Right for Your Business?
If so, a mobile app may be the right move for your business. Offering a mobile app can give consumers more functionality, versatility, speed and a more exclusive user experience, but that typically comes with higher development costs and an increased burden to keep content up to date across all versions and devices.
Aside from cost, the greatest challenge of app development is motivating adoption by consumers who are already flooded with app options. While there's some evidence of "app fatigue" in the consumer psyche, many organizations’ apps continue to be wildly successful.
Mobile Worldwide: The Case for Localization
A report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project showed that mobile devices are now the primary access point for online content. More than half of the internet's traffic now comes from mobile web surfers, and the smartphone is the most common avenue for online shopping by global consumers. While it was once acceptable to develop content only in English, the changing demographics of mobile commerce around the globe now dictate that retailers who hope to be successful in these markets offer content in the native languages of their target consumers as well as adhere to local standards and customs to ensure user engagement and customer conversion.
Just as website localization shifted from "nice to have" to "need to have" for players in the global economy, mobile content localization is now experiencing the same change as more retailers see its potential. Global consumer spending patterns have reinforced this need.
When you make the leap to support multiple languages, be certain that you partner with a provider that can not only provide the content localization you require, but also one who can conduct testing on all versions of your sites and/or apps to verify that they're compatible on all common mobile platforms and operating systems. Through this process of post-localization testing, you can be sure that language, design and functionality are all optimized for your markets, thus ensuring the best possible user experience.
