Website or mobile app: which should your business build first?

It is a common question at the start of a project: should we build a website, a mobile app, or both? Building both at once is rarely the right first step. The better question is where your customers already are and what you need them to do.

Start with a website when

• People need to find you through search
• Customers visit occasionally rather than every day
• You want to launch quickly and learn what people actually use
• The same content has to work on every device

Consider an app when

• Customers come back often, such as for ordering, booking or tracking
• You need phone features like notifications, the camera or location
• The product has to work with a poor or missing connection
• You already have an audience asking for one

A sensible order

For most businesses the website comes first. It is quicker to build, easier to change and visible to search engines. Once you can see which features people return to, those become the case for an app, and the same backend can serve both.

Whichever you choose, design the data and the API once, so the second product does not mean starting again.