App vs website: which is better for your business?

But where Brissa stumbled was in external digitization. “With the pandemic, there was a need to become more present on social networks,” but she shared that her main mistake was not knowing how they worked. “If you don’t have a clear idea, you just pay and you don’t see results and the other party tells you that it’s normal.”

Website or app: the main differences

This will depend entirely on the objectives and type of business. According to the 2023 Data Observatory, carried out by GoDaddy globally, after establishing a new company, the first steps that an entrepreneur usually takes on average to make it known consist of: opening profiles on social networks (38%), advertising online (30%), creating a logo (28%) and launching a website (27%).

A web page is, basically, the digital space to focus all the activities of your company to generate visibility and acquisition of clients or potential clients, shared Gianluca Stamerra, GoDaddy’s senior director for Latin America.

According to Stamerra, one of the main mistakes that small entrepreneurs and SMEs make is not recognizing assumptions and believing that something will work without having tested it in the market.

Another issue is that a web page allows you to professionalize the business more. Having one allows you to have a professional email account, a domain and a “more professional image compared to the general world”.

The applications are for other types of objectives. Alejandro Noriega, regional sales director at AppsFlyer for Latin America, shared: “It all depends on the product. If you want to create your own experience and brand personality you definitely have to build your own stuff.”

According to Noriega, in Mexico, the categories that have grown the most in terms of applications are supermarkets, financial services, retail and fashion. “There was a rise in the use of own apps (…). We increasingly select the apps we download, but we are losing our fear of acquiring and generating products through third-party apps”, he shared and added that 67% of online sales are generated from mobile devices, and of that percentage, 60 % are purchases made in apps.

“It is not that one is better than the other, but they are not necessarily going to suit us,” shared Dadi Adissi, founder and director of NTechnology, a Mexican company dedicated to ICTs. Adissi shares that entrepreneurs and SMEs have to understand their business, their strengths and recognize which platforms work best, as well as leverage platforms that help to correct things that they do not have, such as marketplaces.

On the other hand, there is the collection of user data. On the web, since cookies were eliminated, data and interactions are now measured in a more anonymous way, and user information is no longer tracked, but rather behaviors.

Regarding the applications, Noriega shared that although behaviors are also tracked anonymously, the format makes it possible to identify other types of information that users accept more easily or are more aware that they are sharing their information, due to the permissions they give. “You can tell an app if you want it to track your location or not, or you can put notifications on it,” she said.