Website or Mobile app??

In your opinion which is best and more suitable for work, Website or Mobile application? I am a litlle bit confused about why entrepreneurs are focusing more mobile app than on the website. All the replies are appreciated.

Maybe depends on your target customer?

I think a mobile app is better if your target may go without connection from time to time. Website is good if they can keep the connection. Though, if my memory serves I think Google has that policy on not allow an app that simply shows a website in their store.

I think entrepreneurs are focussing more on mobile apps because through mobile app they could attract local customers by sending them notifications. With the help of gps entrepreneurs get to know if there customers are nearby.

antonymarc it is possible to get the users location and send notifications with a PWA, so that's not that much of a consideration.

There are an awful lot of companies who think they need "an app". Similarly users will search specifically for a native app to provide some function they want, because that's the mindset. In reality a PWA, or just a normal website can provide what they need. A PWA tends to take up a fraction of the storage space of a native application, and a website will use nothing ( or very little ). It's an attitude I personally find frustrating, and hope that it can change. But it will be slow if it does.

The downsides of web apps generally comes down to monetisation. It's generally easier to get people to pay for a product in the app/play store than for a web app. So your left with the likes of advertising and voluntary user support ( patron or similar ). Companies like Brave are working on alternative means for web apps and content creators to earn money, but it still early days.

Publishing to the web also avoids the 30% cut that the app stores take, which if you have a popular app is a huge deal. There's also a much lower barrier to entry - visiting a link is a lot easier than searching the app store and installing something. Construct 3 itself is only on the web and not in any app stores, and it's working out great for us.

I think the main reasons developers still make mobile apps is inertia - it's still seen as "the obvious thing to do". It does simplify taking payments too, if your business is small enough that integrating something like Stripe or Paypal is a significant hurdle. And frustratingly there's still a lot of misconceptions out there, as has been mentioned in this thread already - people keep saying "I need a native app for XYZ", all of which can be done on the web too.

Ashley What kind of strategies have you seen for Pubs/Devs to monetize web game apps - specifically for a premium game (e.g. one that would cost $ in the app store on mobile.)

Mikal There's an excellent breakdown of the financials of PWAs vs native apps on Smashing Magazine which is well worth a read. It's not specifically about games, but it's common to both really.

Third-party services are a lot of work and are also generally high-maintenance - Nepeo has done a ton of work for the Mobile Ad plugin and it requires regular updates too. We don't have the resources to cover all possible third-party services, especially when pretty much every individual user suggests different services that we should support. This is part of the reason we have an addon SDK, so other developers can pitch in without having to wait on us. Meanwhile in practice many developers continue to publish to the app store anyway, so the pragmatic thing to do is to add features to support that, which we have done with Mobile Ad.

Remember there's a big difference between not having the resources to do something, and not being interested in something. I'd love to do hundreds of suggestions and integrate hundreds of services. It's simply not feasible though.

BadMario There's no reason you can't put Adsense ads on the same page as a game. It's the same skill level as making a html page. You just have to be careful with placement(Not on top).

The things we would need third party support for are interstitial ads, videos, and transactions.

I guess technically you could do something like an interstitial if you split the game up.

I know, but like I said in my post that is not the same as being able to insert ads anywhere within the game. That is what we were able to do with CPM Star ads ( and Mochi ads ) in Flash games.

I used to make over $100 per day for about 2 years from those, so this is not some irrelevant thing.

adsense stays on your site, these ads travelled wherever you game went, so you can see the difference. Somebody playing your game on y8 or any of spil games' portals would still see your ads.

Ad networks are much more restrictive now, and those that do allow that are going to be dangerous.

Plus none of them pay like in the past.

That coupled with ad blockers makes that method useless.

Nothing dangerous about putting ads in your game ( same as putting them on the page next to your game as far as danger goes.

Well, don't wanna get into arguments over this. Every cent Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc... make comes from ads, so obviously it is not exactly useless

The ads, are what get dangerous. Many networks do little moderation, and I've seen malicious scripts used with them.

I'm saying this because I've already gone this route. Mainly as a piracy solution.

Anyway yeah there is still money to be made, but you need exponentially more traffic.

Deploying to the reputable portals that do adshare is feasible, but it's a lot of extra work, and there's a lot more competition.