I don't want to download your app
newcome.wordpress.com
newcome.wordpress.com
I downloaded the app out of sheer desperation to check in on time for my flight. In any other circumstance, I would have given up, gone to a competitor, and filed the company and brand name in my brain under "fuck you." (Actually, I did that last part anyway.)
Nagging me to download an app is bad enough. If you took the time to build an iOS or Android app but didn't put any effort into mobile usability for your web site, then you presumed you could make me install your app. You presumed too much.
After being inside large, bureaucratic organisations, I've learnt that this is often the best explanation.
This is why I never want to own an airline: you get blamed when your customer leaves his house too late to be at the airport on time.
The situation doesn't change the fact that the UX for mobile users is/was very bad.
My only beef is that not all of their gates have scanners capable of reading the boarding pass barcode off the phone, so I end up printing the passes anyway.
So, this concept of installing a new browser every time I visit an unfamiliar site, really is ridiculous.
This is almost as bad as "here's a mobile version of our site, opened automatically for your convenience".
If your site is designed peoperly, my iOS device can browse your "full" site just fine, thank you.
This won't last.
My dream is having some AdBlock-style filters for misbehaving websites, run by tens of thousands of people. Then we could nip these practices in the bud.
With a browser, a site can identify who I am.
With an app, the developer can download my location, contacts list, messages, or any other information contained on my phone.
All the more reason to say "fuck you".
I am firmly in the HTML5 camp on rich web apps instead of custom apps. A tangent, but: our purpose in life is to make life better for those we love and also the world in general. Assuming that you are producing good content, do you feel like you better serve people with a universal web + mobile HTML5 web app, or some custom Android and/or iOS app?
One of my projects for the new year is to take my old cookingspace.com hack and add "AI" for suggesting alternative recipes, generating recipes based on ingredients on hand, etc. Yesterday I started to flesh out a simple UI in an Android app, basically just having fun. This morning I had one of those "what was I thinking" moments, and then saw the linked article which I agree with.
I like native apps for a lot of things. They feel and act, well… native! Maybe I just haven't seen enough well executed HTML5 apps, but every one I've used so far is a far cry from what a native app can be. It's often pretty obvious when a "native" app is just a glorified Web view.
But… I don't want to download an app to access your Web forum or read your news articles. I don't need a new app for every freaking Web site I visit. My phone has a perfectly capable Web browser, and I'm not afraid to use it. It works surprisingly well even on a lot of sites that obviously weren't designed for it.
"I do like having the option of a higher-fidelity experience if I want it. If you provide a lot of value, I’ll grab the app on my own accord and enjoy it that much more, thanks."
Exactly! For sites I access super frequently, and where the app actually makes it easier to use, I'm all for it! But with rare exceptions, I just don't spend enough time on a given news site or forum to warrant downloading an app for it, no matter how amazing that app is.
HTML5 is a fine medium for content delivery. Please get out of my face and let me browse your damn site!
(On a related note: sites pretending to be iPhone apps in the browser are… usually more irritating than useful. I know Apple did it with their iPhone manual, but I think even their attempt is kinda lame. If you look like a native app, I start expecting your UI to respond like a native app, and I'm usually very disappointed.)
That's why native apps are still important. Once the above is figured out, I highly doubt companies will want to pay to develop on 2-3 different codebases in different programming languages than their website, to support native apps.
But iOS/Android make their money from native apps so I doubt they're particularly motivated to make mobile HTML5 apps the standard.
But that's the thing: we're talking about forums and news sites here. Mobile browsers are perfectly capable of rendering news, blogs and forums as fast as you'd ever need. Companies aren't building these kinds of native apps for the performance.
If you take ads from a typical ad network and put them in a mobile web page, the page probably will look terrible, and a lot of people have ad blockers in their browsers anyway. (Mobile Firefox recommends AdBlock in its home screen.)
A lot of mobile apps, on the other hand, have ads that cannot be removed except by rooting your phone, and even then, many ads slip through. (I use Android with AdAway.)
Also, people are more used to paying $0.99 for apps than they are to paying for web pages.
I think we're both right: companies probably do believe they'll be better able to monetize an app than a web site, but they're probably wrong, and they probably think that for faddish reasons.
I find it very difficult to actually read long-form material in a web browser, whether desktop/laptop, or phone/tablet, with all the competing features and distractions which are presented. HN is better than most, G+ is particularly bad, other sites fall at various places along that range.
The specific mode of advertising website-based apps via pop-up interstitials is typical of what I find really, really annoying about sites (persistent header, footer, or sidebar elements in particular).
When TBL's original WWW documents were posted to HN some months back, I was particularly impressed with how readable the pages were, largely due to the bare minimalism of their markup. For actually presenting information (which was, it turns out, what he was hoping to accomplish), the original HTML markup remains surprisingly good.
Server attention span is still terrible, as explained by XKCD: http://xkcd.com/869/
Fuck you, Google.
The Unix philosophy is for small, atomic, pipeable utilities that do a single task (more properly, subtask) in conjunction with other tools.
There are exceptions. including, say, web browsers. But where a browser is one level of monolithic app, it's generalized to that particular information purpose. A site-dedicated application is worlds worse.
A huge app that does nothing, that's a very different thing.
I'm an iOS developer. I have over 500 apps in iTunes ("Can you check this out please and tell me how much a menu like theirs would cost"), mostly not on my devices.
Since I moved to Android and saw the permissions their app wants (access to my phone calls and calendar, among others), I've found a great alternative: they can wait until I get to my desktop, if I bother remembering.
They clearly have absolutely no interest in serving me content or helping me do what I want to do
... coming from the site owner side of things, I'll offer a friendly counter argument (which has been rephrased in light of down votes): site owners are interested in serving you content, or helping you do what you want to do ... just in a better way.
I agree ads or prompts can be annoying, but to say site owners go through the trouble of developing a mobile app and advertising it b/c they have no interest in serving content or helping the user experience doesn't quite fit. To me, a site that offers a mobile app says the exact opposite.
A link at the top would suffice. Or the bottom. Or anywhere, really, that doesn't prevent me from viewing the content I was trying to view.
Edit: In case it's not clear, I think the article is written about full screen overlays that I'm describing. If not, I'm all wrong here and my posts probably don't make sense. I'm totally cool with a site mentioning that they have an app and that I should get it. What I'm not okay with is when you are prevented from accessing the site until you agree or disagree to get their app.
They clearly have absolutely no interest in serving me content or helping me do what I want to do
... too literally. I believe the trouble of developing and offering a mobile app supplements their motivation to serve content, in a better way.
But your point was well stated, and it's clear you're not against a better mobile experience, but rather the manner in which it's advertised. In which case I agree ... shoving a full screen ad down a user's throat is frustrating.
I've experienced this a number of times. The UX is more than just the App. It is how people get your app and more.
But yeah, they're in 1% of the world where app is more useful than the site.
I realized that a lot of apps that I get prompted to download have effectively one-off usage patterns and I'd delete them immediately after downloading and using them. This app would've essentially just allowed for very basic functionality for layouts, buttons, and form input from however many companies built these basic interfaces. That way I wouldn't have to download any more super-special apps, I could just load up the interface and work with that.
As I started thinking about this app more, I realized it was called a "web browser." I wish more companies put stronger emphasis on their mobile site.
Building native apps means that new people with new training need to be hired, a new team with a new manager needs to be formed. And once the budget is there for the new shiny; it must be spent, to do otherwise would be wasteful!
Never underestimate the power of a bureaucracy to make things more complex so that actors on the inside can justify their existence.
The problem is with higher-ups that are on the backside of trends but also think it needs to be a priority to do it soon... Okay.
"Well the consultants recommend this way."
Of course it changed eventually, but man it's weird to see. Of course, the we often joked that a consultant's job was to say do B while we were doing A, then come back in six months and ask why we were doing B? A was obviously the way to go!
I think it's more that existing employees want to amp up their resumes, and/or Mortgage-Driven Development. That the apps (and their CTAs) routinely suck tells me it's Mr. Learned-Rails-In-24hrs doing tech-lead.
Every time I see an "Ask HN: what app do you use for HN?" I wonder why people don't just use the browser. What is the allure?
Also, if you set up local caching properly, your game should be fully available in offline mode as well, if the user saves your site to their home screen.
I'd like to say I would boycott a site for its a noting nag screens but I don't think that's a very mature way to handle it and all it hurts is me.
For me the most annoying thing is that sometimes I already do have the app and there's no good hand off. For example, I have the yelp app, but when google takes me to a yelp review and the nag screen says install the app, I would expect it to transition my current page view to th app equivalent. Sadly this is not the case. Ditto for LinkedIn
1. To spam you. 2. To track your every move.
From my own personal experience, if I'm visiting a specific article on the site, my immediate interest is getting the information from the article. Downloading an app is not going to take priority, even if I do ultimately want the app.
We had mocked up a "email me a link to this app" link for our site, in order to give the reader an option to email themselves an iTunes link for later, without taking them outside of the scope of reading the specific article they are looking at. In the end, we switched over to Apple's HTML banner thingy, which gives the opporutnity for people who have already installed the app the ability to open the specific article in the app itself.
These popovers/nags/redirects are typically annoying because the apps do little to nothing to add to the content or user experience. Just because the company spent time and money developing them doesn't make them useful. Why burden users with the company's poor decision?
Can an app be superior because it allows other types of content that can't be done well via web technologies? Perhaps. Can an app help with content discovery? Perhaps. But when a user clicks on a link to standard text/images/video they're not looking for either of those.
If you want to advertise your app because it provides other features that a user may find valuable, that's fine. Advertise it like any other product that runs against your content. If nobody uses it there's likely a good reason. Don't force it on them.
But that's all beside the point... you are so quick to argue against me, you don't even see that we agree. Re-read my original post. As I said, the execution sucks. You want to inform your audience that there's an app option, but most of the implementations suck and are too intrusive.
Because here's the thing: when people see a pop up of any kind, they reflexively think "fuck you". And it doesn't take a marketing genius to realize that priming people in this fashion isn't the best opening move. It's like stroking a cat backwards; the simple rule is "Don't do this."
The correct approach is to start by provide people with what they want, the the form they request, without interruptions, redirects, etc. Make them happy before you try to sell them anything. Not until they're satisfied should you insert a plug for your mobile app. Knowing that you'll be taking up valuable screen space, make sure the app really is much better than the web app. Then tell people that it's much better, and that you think they'll really like it for this reason. And that's it.
Give people what they want, don't be a dick, and you're golden.
I was just calling out dpe82's absurd absolute statement that they suck because all apps "do little to nothing to add to the content or user experience"... Implying that if they the app did offer substantially more, then it would all somehow be acceptable.
The problem is that you're thinking about what you want, not what your users want. Your users want to view whatever content they came to your webpage to view. stop getting in the way of that with your wants. the answer really is that all such things suck, your position just seems to be that you don't care how much they suck because you have an agenda to push.
Is there no situation where you see an app as being superior to the website?
For AppShopper.com, yes the app is the superior experience to the mobile web. There were overwhelming requests for an app. We made the app to serve our users. Our goals and user goals are not always mutually exclusive.
If i say that you spend time and money on your startup, and you want people to see it, it does not mean that the reason I want people to use my startup is primarily for budgetary reasons.
In retrospect I should have left the word money out of it because it gets people worked up.
The result is:
- Click github link.
- Prompt menu : which application do you wish to use? List of browsers and the github app.
- Click on github.
- Github loads, then...
- Prompt menu : which application do you wish to use? List of browsers.
I could use the 'Always' option, but then the github app wouldn't recognize the links it actually handles.
The real issue here is how they inform you about this app. The less intrusive and obnoxious they do this, the better, obviously.
And it's really goddamn annoying.
I can't stand that popup either though and have a severe dislike for tapatalk. From my experience with administering a forum, they charge quite a bit for their software and then charge quite a bit more on top for small bug fixes they won't fix otherwise :(
One example is tapatalk users not being aware you're part of the forum staff when you're attempting to calm down some users and they go off on you. Though that works two ways I suppose, since they can't see you're part of the staff and go off on you as well and gives you an excuse to give them a couple day vacation :)
Here is the actual wording:
Make an ad in the sidebar but don't open a fucking confirm window!
Now Available! Download WordPress for iOS
Just don't install the app and the hype will soon be gone.
(Regarding most CRUD native apps)
I can't wait to get over this hard-on for native apps.
ABC, you too, for god's sake, I clicked on a random news story, I don't need your app.
sent from my iphone. sent from my ipad.
yeah, because I care what device you sent me an email from.
sent from my desktop computer using firefox.
Many emails do necessitate a reply but you aren't going to be able to spellcheck and put the time into it as you would on a desktop. Afterall, you are mobile.
Stating so in the signature lets the recipient know you are giving them your full attention as much as the technology and situation will allow. I've always felt it was a good thing when users noted this.
And of course, as someone has mentioned, it is the default on iOS devices. Then again, users unable to edit their default signature probably aren't giving you their full attention and the reply will amount to yes/no or worse, not answer a single question with any sort of detail. Not that if the user were on a desktop that would change a bit. I'm not sure how these people are employed as I would fire so many people over the way they handle email.
"i"pad - get it? :)
This becomes crucial when you are doing back and forth between potential customers.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunderbird/addon/display-m...
I'm not your billboard.
Leaving this one line unchanged says ~= zero about a person.
I wish news.yc had Tapatalk support.
I register this functionality, which removes you from the browser for a popup-box, as essentially a security vulnerability which is being exploited by malware.