I think one of the most interesting/telling user experience things in the industry today is why people feel so strongly about not installing apps. It seems like it spans most people, from novice users all the way to technology experts.
Personally, I've never understood it, since nearly every mobile website is terrible. I prefer installing the app.
Seems like a key problem for mobile OS vendors to solve.
Because the experience of "installing" a web page by visiting the URL is still orders of magnitude more pleasant than installing an app. No need to clutter your homescreen with an app that you'll use twice and then forget about. Alternatively, no risk of not putting on your home screen and then forgetting about the 600 MB it's silently occupying on your disk until you're midway through your sister's wedding and trying to quickly free up space for more photos. No permissions to grant. No contributing to the endless stream of update notifications. No running in the background eating battery or ferrying your contacts to their servers or listening in on your microphone to use your voice for training their machine learning models.
Mobile websites are easier to install, fine to use for anything that doesn't require specific hardware permissions, and then when the user stops using them they stay gone. Not to mention they work on my Linux machine and my Windows machine and my iPad and my Galaxy. Forget apps.
I'm rarely looking at 1 restaurant at a time, I'm trying to compare 5, or 6 or 10.
The Yelp app has no means of doing that.
Also, I can't easily select some text in the app, like the name of a dish I'm not familiar with, and quickly trigger a web search in another tab to do some quick side reading.
I have the Yelp app installed, but 9 times out of 10 the browser is how I prefer to use search for restaurants.
Because of Yelp's frustrating site restrictions, I find myself often using Google instead, even though I prefer Yelp!!!!!!
How ridiculous is that!!
Browsers also seem to have better low bandwidth performance than most apps. Probably because doing constrained network communications is hard and only browsers have the billions of reps needed to practice getting it right. With most apps I find that network handling in poor network situations (like is all too common when traveling and looking for a restaurant) is inferior to most browsers.
So yeah, Yelp would definitely win me over if they kept their site browser and low-bandwidth friendly.
Problem is, you aren't Yelp's customer, you're their product. Same for all the other sites people are complaining about. Unless that dynamic changes, everyone will only get user experience correct by accident.
I'm sure the interface for advertisers must be pleasant, though.
Because mobile apps make our mobile phones data collection devices. When accessing a service from the browser you have a lot more control on what information it receives about you.
I am not saying most users think like that, providing anecdotal feedback here.
On iOS and now newer versions of Android you are able to individually grant and revoke permissions. What information are you expecting them to extract via the app that you can't block?
My phone uses android 8.1 API. I know about granular permissions but in practice this does not always work. For example the PlayMemories app from Sony - to use with Sony digital cameras - does not open at all (actually it opens to tell you to give the permission and doesn't do anything else) unless you give it location permissions. Why do I need to tell my location to an app whose use is to wirelessly grab the pictures from my camera to my phone?
Because location can be ascertained from BLE and wifi scanning, Android classifies the use of those things as location services.
So it's not exactly that Sony wants or is even asking for your location, it's Google telling you that if you give the sony app the BLE or wifi scanning functionality it wants, it would be possible for them to figure out where you're at.
That warning means they could, and so google is telling you, not that they are.
Well, it's especially annoying with something like Yelp that you often use on the go and sometimes in stressful situations (somebody in your group is hungry and ornery).
Downloading an app can take an unpredictable amount of time and bandwidth, and once you download it you may have to log in, remember or set a password, deal with 2FA, click a verification email, etc.
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After enough of these experiences I nearly always carry a bunch of fruit bars and such around. Both improves the groups mood, and usually allows to find better food afterwards.
Ugh. Yes, but there are many fewer sites that actually need this than those that deploy it just so they can harvest emails.
The only sites that need this are those where users are adding content and the site is moderated, and then login should only be required for moderated actions.
So Yelp should require a login to leave a review, but not to read one.
> Seems like a key problem for mobile OS vendors to solve.
They're working on it but it's a hard problem because too many app developers, especially at household-name companies, have a history of acting in bad faith. When you're prompted to install an app you're really having to guess whether it'll chew batter or metered data, or attempt to exploit your personal data.
The OS vendors are offering better controls but it takes time to rebuild trust, especially when they're not sure whether the OS vendor quietly makes exceptions for major companies. Remember when Uber was violating Apple's policies and had no punishment for it? People will remember that for years even if they've had strict compliance ever since.
Apps simply often have alot less value to offer. And with a higher price attached. See permissions, tracking, notifications, worse UX sometimes, ad-blocker missing/ad-land.
Some are more affected of the issues, some less.
> Seems like a key problem for mobile OS vendors to solve.
Speaking from the experience of my spouse (fancy iPhone user) and I (low-end Android user) -- both our phones are normally out of memory. We take lots of family photos and videos, which fill up our phones and are tedious to delete or back up. So downloading a new app means first we have to delete something else.
A secondary but lesser reason is notifications. I know that every app will require a minute or two of effort to locate the notification settings and switch them all off.
I don't like installing apps on my phone and having them do whatever in the background. I don't want notifications. I don't want to give an app any kind of access to my phone, period. I don't want more ads in different places. I don't want a different interface than what I'm already used to.
> ... why people feel so strongly about not installing apps
Because it means I'll be prompted for the App Store password, which I probably won't remember (or will get wrong 3 times) and so will need to change it, but the process won't let me change the password to anything I've used in the past 12 months (so I cannot change it to whatever I though the password was). So I need to make up a whole new password, and that means my mail and everything else linked to the account will stop working on all my other devices and I'll need to update the account passwords on those too.
Because I worry apps are invasive and run a bunch of stuff scraping my data that I don't want them know about. At least when I use the website on my mobile phone I can close it when I'm done and that's that. I almost always select to use the desktop version of a site from mobile.
I never really liked mobile websites. I prefer a desktop version and I can zoom in where needed. Navigation and minimization of features on mobile “optimized” experiences is not great. I’ve mostly conceded and got used to it but early years when sites were transitioning was tough for me.
Personally, I've never understood it, since nearly every mobile website is terrible. I prefer installing the app.
Seems like a key problem for mobile OS vendors to solve.
If you don't like it, why not?