A church app

What is a native application and what is a web application, what is the difference between the two?

A native app is what you have to install on your computer or cell phone. It is closer to the operating system.

The web application works using the browser itself, be it Google Chrome, Safari, or any other, as long as it is modern.

The native app works by itself, you have Microsoft Word and Excel, for example. You click, it opens and runs on its own.

The web application, you need another application to be able to run, in this case, the browser.

Any website that you access and can perform actions can be considered a web application.

Facebook is a web application, it has a lot of functionality inside. Gmail is a web application.

YouTube too, and it has a complex structure. The YouTuber has the control panel for him to publish videos, manage comments, and there is the dashboard.

Anyway, maybe the pastor already uses a web application long before he has a smartphone.

So should the church choose a web app or a native one?

The main word is: it depends. It depends, among other factors, on the purpose of the application.

Some features you can only get with a native app, Bluetooth cannot be accessed through a browser.

But everything a church app needs, information about the church, about services, times, events, and even if they want something more social, so that people can interact, publish photos, make videos, is possible with a web application, including using geolocation, notifications, etc.

Are there any other application formats?

There are also hybrid apps. The development will be using web resources, but when the application is finished it is exported to be published in stores.

The problem is that unfortunately we've come across sites telling you to install their app and when you download it's nothing more than the site within an app.

It's a very poorly done job, just to “be in trend”, you have to have my app, my company's app here or my church's app here. The experience sucks.

Today there are so many apps, and so many bad ones, is finding the right app a problem?

That's a real problem. The point is that we already have a much more mature web search engine development.

The behavior today of wanting to access a site, or wanting a service, or wanting a product and playing on Google.

Within the Apple App Store, and within the Android Play Store, this search is not even close to what Google does, for example, so, in fact, there is a range problem.

The reach of a website, the reach of a web application, for example, is much greater, it is almost three times greater than that of the native application in the stores.

And that's a problem when you favor, for example, the development of a native app, because you'll have less reach.

And the time that people spend using the app today is much longer, it's almost 20 times greater than the time that people spend on websites.

Is there a solution for this?

So there is a solution to this problem, this big problem, which is what we call today a progressive web app, which is the PWA.

What is this PWA?

PWA works exactly like a web app, but it has similar or exactly the same experience and usage characteristics of a native app.

Then you can reach people through a search engine, for example. You have as large a reach as that of a website and as soon as that person arrived on your app, they have a user experience just like or very close to what they would have with the native app.

What are the benefits of a Progressive Web App?

You don't have to do a heavy download. It is there on the 3G/4G internet and on its website, and at that moment the information necessary for this improved experience to take place has already been downloaded.

From there, then, you reached that person and can begin to deliver a user experience similar to that of the native app.

That person will stay much longer, they will spend much more time there on your site, that is, on your church's PWA APP.

There is an interesting case, which is the case of Forbes, which recently stopped advertising its native application. When you access the site via a cell phone, it already gives you the option to interact with the PWA there.

And it has a much more enjoyable experience and you end up spending a lot more time there. With this change, they had an increase of 43% in relation to the number of users and an increase of 100% in relation to the time that those users stayed on the site.

The Progressive Web App, comes to be able to make this midfield between the traditional web application and the Native application.

I gather in a medium-sized church here, about 400 members. The pastor wanted it because he wanted an app, and then we went to talk.

What was the purpose? Basically, it only has news, information about the church, and the most important resource there is the part to find a cell group.

The user can do this on the web himself, a PWA application would have solved the problem in a much more satisfactory way. But the pastor wanted to get into the fad.

It's fashionable, the need in many cases is just out of desire. “Aah, I want to have an app and stuff, something.”

PWAs are growing way too much these days, not only here in California, but in the United States in general.

For example, Twitter launched a Progressive Web App, newspapers like the Washington Post have a Progressive Web App.

This week I had to call an Uber, and because of our episode I decided not to use Uber's native app, I chose to use Uber's PWA, the progressive web app.

I had as good an experience as the native app.

Is a PWA church app hard to build?

The development of the Progressive Web App is nothing out of this world, it's not a seven-headed animal, and any church that wants to have a Progressive Web App today is possible, it's accessible.

Not to mention that more church people will be able to use the PWA app, as it is much lighter and can be used on older devices.

What are the biggest obstacles in developing an app?

Basically it's cost, time and capacity, the possibility of finding labor.

I have experience managing a team of developers, I used to work managing a team in the development of a native application. ,

Until, for a number of reasons, I realized that in that specific case it was not worth the outlay of work and money, for that specific application to be native.

I realized that there was nothing that only a native app could offer. So, if I don't have a need that only the native application can offer me, and if its development cost is higher, it's not worth staying on a native app.

Native app is more expensive for two reasons:
the labor that works with this development, that is, the developer that develops for iOS, for example, the developer that develops for Android, it has a higher hourly cost, it is more expensive.

In addition to being a more expensive labor force, it is also a more time-consuming job, so web development is objectively faster than development for iOS and Android.

So I made the decision to study better for each new project and see if I really need to work with a native app or if the most appropriate choice is actually the PWA.

It's much more expensive, it's much slower, and it's harder to find a good workforce to develop native apps. And then when I don't have that need, the PWA becomes the default choice.

Most of the time with PWA you will be much happier, you will spend less money, you will have your product faster, you will have your product updated much more frequently, much faster, than with a native app.

And it has another positive effect, in fact, your users will always have an updated version of the PWA.

Every time they access your site, that is, every time they access your church's PWA app, they will be using the latest version.