Website first or App first?

Updated at June 10th, 2020


Speak the bold truth!

Lots of wholesalers are struggled on whether they should choose a website or application for their online selling

If you only want to choose one between the website or application, then you might start to split hairs.

I believe you will find your answer here. 


Let’s see what you need to invest on a website: 

  • Spend more thousand euro on website design, develop and get your domain. 
  • Spend thousand euro per month to ask someone to maintain the website
  • Take a picture of each product and upload to the website
  • Start to promote your website and send a message to let everyone know that the website is online
  • After someone made an order, follow the order to do shipment
  • The maintenance staff take the ‘out of stock’ goods offline every day, and manually synchronize the inventory
  • There will be new visitors to find your website through the search engine
  • You need to pay for the advertisement and the maintenance staff need to take care of your advertising
  • Take photos of new products and upload to your website
  • Then send a message to notify your clients that there are new products on your website to check and make an order!



As long as the execution is in place, everything will develop as you wish.

A month later…

With a high probability, you have two questions:

    • Why there is no clients make orders on your website? Are we have chosen the wrong product? Or is the photo not attractive enough?
    • After a calculation, your income is not even balanced on the website project. So, how long will it last?


Market Research

Then, you asking some closed clients for their feedback on your website.

Client A: Hey! I do receive your message but I am really bad on the computer.

Client B: Yes, I received your message on my phone but my screen is too small to see your website.

Client C: Yeaaah, I received your message but I prefer to come to choose the product. 

Client D: Hi, I received your message! Your website is so cool! I do like it and I will keep making orders there.

All the feedbacks are reasonable since different people have different preferences and the website is easier to check on the computer.

Read text messages in mobile phones won’t influence user-experience, however, to read a fully designed website with all types of products information will highly decrease user-experiences and satisfaction.

References in 2019

More than 67% of the world's population uses mobile phones, especially in Europe the percentage is higher (71% in France, 75% in Germany and 87% in Spain)

You can also get the feeling from the people around you that they barely use the computer but using mobile phones every second.

But not all people are like that. As the market research we did, people always have different ideas.


What can we find out? 

If we only do the website, then we will lose the people who don’t like to use the website or don’t know how to use the website.

If we only do applications, then we lost the people who use the website.

Everyone wants to operate their business well. So we need to maximize the possibility of getting business instead of limited on something.

That's why we don’t need to choose between website and application. We need to do both.

Then we can cover all types of clients and receive orders from both website and applications!


Tips

Mobile phones are generally divided into two categories, apple and Android (Huawei, Samsung, Xiaomi…).

Apple's app can't be installed on Android, and the android app can't be installed on apple.

Then we need to make 2 applications, one for Apple, one for Android.

 

Website + Apple App + android app, how to operate?

These three are like your employees, you need to separate their role.

The website is responsible for attracting new clients by uploading attractive clothing photos and introducing your company.

Apple App and android app are responsible for keeping clients and receiving orders.

Why?

You need an application because as long as your client has a mobile phone, he will bring his phone with him almost every second no matter what he does. If your client installed your application on their phone, it is easier to build interaction with your client and make an order since your client will receive a notification when you have new products!

You also need a website because you can print your web address on the business card. Your clients can easily find you through the internet!

Then, all you need to do is put the application downloading link on your website in order to let the new clients find your application and install it. 

In this way, the whole process chain has been connected! The two "employees" can work together tacitly and maximize your profit.

You might think the idea is quite good just the cost would be high since you need to invest on the website, application for AppStore, and application for the Android market.

Especially as we mentioned above, you might think about how to breakeven your online selling.

The secret method is: do not hire professional maintenance staff in order to reduce your financial pressure.

It would be good if you can also:

  • One payment for the website, android app, and apple app.
  • Both website and applications should be simple and easy to operate even without professional
  • The website can be updated automatically. If there is a need to update something, it must easy to operate.
  • Just upload product information once and both website and applications can sync the info and display automatically.



Does someone really provide this kind of service?

Yes, MicroStore can literally do the same thing. You can click here to read more about MicroStore.

A decade ago, we might just need a website to develop our business. Nowadays, it’s won’t be the case since the clients are on both website and applications. We need to do both in order to get our clients.

Thank you for reading and I wish you a prosperous business.

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