Perttu Tolvanen, North Patrol / J. Boye 2016 Aarhus / @perttutolvanen

Deciding your digital touch pointsNative apps, bots or just a responsive website?

This is a summarised version of the original presentation version. Several case stories and other examples have been excluded from this version. However, plenty of additional text boxes and explanations have been added to this version.

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North Patrol – your advisor in complex web renewal projects

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This already happened.

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It is not a question of whether to build mobile services, it is about HOW to build them – what kind of apps, what kind of websites, what channels to use? How to reach customers? How to offer a

good user experience?

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This presentation explores different cases where organizations have decided to either build apps or, instead, focused on building great

websites without apps – and what the practical and business reasons for their choices have been.

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A few things to note1. We’ve seen a big rush to apps during the

last few years – yet app development hasn’t become easier or cheaper.

2. We haven’t solved the discoverability problem either. Apps are hard to find, hard to install, and they keep their stuff in siloes.

3. Yet there are plenty of things that can only be done with apps – such as notifications, access to camera, continuous access to location, offline usage.

4. The biggest change is the user experience gap between apps and websites. Nowadays websites can be built to work almost as smoothly as native apps.

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Especially connecting to and controlling different devices (e.g. at home) is

something that will require native apps now

and in the future.

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Apps are often the only way to reach new

devices, especially in Apple’s ecosystem. There

are no signs that this would be changing.

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What are strong reasons for creating native mobile apps?

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Example: banking apps• Strong contractual customer relationship and plenty of self-service tasks. Banks can be seen as

being almost “tool providers” for your “money management”.

Example: doctor/healthcare appsHealthcare often has

strong contractual relationship, especially

occupational healthcare.

Examples:

Personal chat with a nurse, €15 per 20

minutes.

Video discussion with a doctor.

Example: doctor/healthcare apps Healthcare can have good business case for providing video

appointments and other demanding interaction sessions

which can only be done with native apps.

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Example: telecom operator’s app for customers

Telecom companies also have strong contractual relationship and they often want to use that relationship to expand into new business areas.

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Native app remembers your

credentials.

Strongest advantage of native apps for businesses is the better

capability to remember login details.

Example: airline apps (=ticket apps)One of the biggest areas of native apps has always been travel. Their business

case is typically built around easier access to ticket details (and bar code) and the possibility to offer upgrades

and other additional items (directly to customers!, not through brokers).

Example: Helsinki public transportation ticket app

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Example: Helsinki public transportation ticket app

Example: taxi and other travel apps

Customer expectations should also not be underestimated. Uber set the standard for taxi ordering and

Uber did it by using apps. Nowadays most people expect taxi ordering to happen with an app (Uber or not).

Example: taxi and other travel appsFor example, Finland’s most most

popular taxi ordering app (”Valopilkku”) would not really

require to be an app – there is no contractual relationship, nothing that would _require_ to have an

app. Still, it probably makes sense to have the app, because Uber set

the standard for this category.

Example: car rental apps

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Sometimes apps are also done because of competition. If the leading player builds a rich app, others might follow, even though having an app

might not be technically required.

Having a good app, and being the first one, can also be a

competitive advantage, especially against new

competition since big players can ”teach” their customers

to use their app directly (instead of going to price

comparison websites).

Example: car rental apps

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Car rental apps are a good example of a category which has

been ”on the edge” for a long time. Apps can make sense for most loyal customers who have

contractual relationship (and special prices) and want the best

possible service. For other customer groups, the app is probably just a distraction.

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User experience can be better.

Especially complex ordering and delivery processes (e.g. food

delivery, car rental) can benefit from having an app, because apps

remember ”the state” of the process better than websites and

apps can provide notifications.

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Apps have already replaced traditional

self-service channels, a.k.a. extranet

services, for many consumer brands.

Example: B2B app for reporting employment pension (and related documents)

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In general, B2B is not building plenty of apps, and probably

shouldn’t. But there are special cases where it makes sense to

build apps that provide additional service on top of a full-featured extranet service, e.g. for scanning documents and making quick changes

when on the road.

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Access to a phone’s capabilities:

- notifications,

- camera, - offline saving,

- continuos access to GPS,- ability to connect to other

devices

Some of these can be (technically) done with web apps already, e.g. access to camera and

offline saving of content, but they often require

special tricks and can be very hard to implement so that they work reliably in

every device (Android, iOS, and others). If these are critical factors, it still typically pays to go with

native apps.

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Summary: Reasons for creating native apps1. Strong contractual relationship

with customers, e.g. banking, loyalty program.

2. Your customers frequently do business or interact with you – and they want to start where they left off previously.

3. Your app requires access to hardware features like camera, offline saving or notifications.

4. The user experience benefits greatly from a native app that remembers the state and sends notifications (e.g. ticket apps).

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Summary: Reasons for creating native apps1. Strong contractual relationship

with customers, e.g. banking, loyalty program.

2. Your customers frequently do business or interact with you – and they want to start where they left off at previous time.

3. Your app requires an access to hardware features like camera, offline saving or notifications.

4. The user experience benefits greatly from a native app that remembers the state and sends notifications (e.g. ticket apps).

This reason is greatly challenged by web

apps and messaging bots.

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Examples where you don’t need a native

app. … in this presentation hybrid apps are not discussed at all,

because no one should be building them. Real-life experience has shown that too often hybrid apps offer ’the

worst of both worlds’, so the true choice should be done between native apps and web apps. (Especially because building native apps has become slightly easier in recent

years, e.g. because of React Native and Xamarin.)

Example: Helsinki Journey Planner app

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https://beta.reittiopas.fi

Example: Helsinki Journey Planner app

https://beta.reittiopas.fi

You can even set your own preferences, e.g. how fast walker you are. Additionally, you can set your favorite locations, your

favorite stops, your favorite transportations categories – and the web app remembers those even though there

is no login or anything.Marketing challenge: Web apps can be harder to advertise and promote since ”Download from App store” sounds better than

”Go to this URL address and make a bookmark to your home

screen”.

Example: complex travel ticket ordering processes (Tallink)

E-commerce is actually a good ”counter-example” to the case of taxi apps. In e-commerce, customers are expecting the check-out to happen in browser. Only the biggest players are building apps (Zalando, Amazon) and

even they say that apps are not hugely succesful way of getting sales.

Especially complex ordering processes are good cases for web apps since

typically ordering processes happen inside one session.

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Web apps / websites can offer a rich user experience if your

typical user session happens inside a short time frame (e.g. e-commerce checkout,

shopping assistants).

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The world beyond apps?

WeChat is a similar messaging service to Facebook Messenger, but there are also brands and apps inside the service, and you can use them to book doctor’s appointments, order taxis, pay e-commerce orders and

plenty of other things.

One of the key concepts of WeChat is that you can make simple transactions inside WeChat, but brands can also offer the possibility to download a special app for more complex

transactions. So in China, WeChat is not trying to replace apps, it is just offering an easy way to try out the services and work as

the notifications channel.

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Case KLM and Facebook Messenger• When buying tickets at KLM.com you can authorize KLM as your Facebook Messenger contact.• Check out the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGLASey3MAE

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Case KLM and Facebook Messenger• When buying tickets at KLM.com you can authorize KLM as your Facebook Messenger contact.• Check out the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGLASey3MAE

For KLM, the Facebook Messenger bot replaces the

need for a native app completely. The Messenger provides offline saving, gives

an effective notifications channel and even a channel

to do upgrades (seats, business class) and provide

customer service.

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Case New York Times and US election (and Facebook Messenger)

New York Times is running a very interesting experiment, where they report about US elections using a Facebook Messenger bot.

Most likely travel industry and media companies will be the first wave of companies that start building Messenger bots to provide

notifications and simple functionality to customers.

Final advice• When choosing your touch points, consider user experience requirements and your

business requirements.

Messaging bots for transactions that have several steps, but not a strong contractual relationship (e.g. travel).

Web apps and responsive websites for applications and services where transactions are mostly made without logging in and during one session. (e.g. e-commerce, assistant apps).

Native apps for transactional services that require logging in and are used frequently. Also if access to phone features is critical.

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Contact:

Perttu TolvanenWeb & CMS Expert, Partner@perttutolvanen / www.perttutolvanen.com

050 368 5199perttu.tolvanen@northpatrol.com

North Patrol Oywww.northpatrol.com

North Patrol OyMannerheimintie 18A00100 HelsinkiFinland

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North Patrol is your expert in selecting the best vendors and technologies for your next web, intranet, extranet, or online store project.Our main focus is on the critical stages of project planning, defining requirements and selecting the best partners. Additionally, we support the implementation and assess the results.www.northpatrol.com

Advisor in buying web projects

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Buyer’s Guide to Web ProjectsOur blog covers the CMS market in Northern Europe and offers advice in planning and buying renewal projects.

www.northpatrol.com/blog

PS. Im also writing about bots, mobile apps and web apps in my Medium Journal:

https://medium.com/stories-behind-the-screens