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Comment by bashinator | Hacker News Reader

Why do these small businesses need apps rather than web sites? Reading the description of these templated apps, they seem to to be the low quality kind of web site replacement that doesn't offer any extra functionality over a web site.

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IMHO they don't; a website is much better.

However some people (for reasons I don't understand) don't like to use the mobile browser. If there isn't an app, they won't do it. Does not seem to matter if the app is just a piece of crap with a web view.

To clarify, I hate the mobile browser too (I much prefer the laptop/desktop user experience), but if I'm on mobile anyway the browser is better by far than a crappy app.

Because if some of their customers are prepared to keep a reminder of the restaurant on their home screen, why would they turn that down? And it's a lot easier to tell them to install an app which they understand the concept of and have done many times before than to try to explain how to add a website to their home screen.

Discoverability. Almost a form of SEO. Some people just look for an app reflexively. And template apps make sense for very simple applications such as merchant info pages or restaurant menus.

Some of these things require push notifications, location services, or other things that are only available in native apps. From the examples, governments using 311 apps and universities offering directory apps seem to be good examples where an app seems like a better solution that a web site.

Push notifications require an app, which is likely a big reason for wanting to get users into apps.

> Push notifications require an app

An app isn't required if you use a browser that supports push notifications.

https://developers.google.com/web/progressive-web-apps/ https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/codelabs/push...

On iOS the only way to get a push notification is via an app. Mobile Safari doesn’t support push (or service workers).

I think you might be correct. Until someone else corrects me, I found this in Apple's documentation about website notifications and Safari Push Notifications:

"This document pertains to OS X only. Notifications for websites do not appear on iOS."

https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Ne...

Although, I'd be hard convinced that people accept the push notification dialog on websites at even 5% of what they do with apps.

Well yeah, but if you were ordering a pizza and the restaurant asked if they can show you push notifications to alert you when your pizza's on the way, you would accept them.

I can guarantee that if the pizza website generator here had an ionic app, that would be the mobile app they would be using

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