This content originally appeared on Ethan Marcotte’s website and was authored by Ethan Marcotte
I’ve noticed a recent trend on the web — or at least, on the parts of it I’ve visited. Maybe you’ve noticed it too.
Here’s what happens: you’re on a website, and one of these little prompts pops up.
These prompts let you know that there’s an app, and that the website you’re on…well, it’s not quite the app, is it?
Maybe you should check out the app.
The app does sound pretty great.
These little suggestions tend to be what I notice first on a website.
Sometimes the alert takes over the entire page, so I can’t help but notice it.
Sometimes the alert will let me know about the app twice in a row. (I see this quite a lot.)
I always close these alerts, because I rarely install apps.
I do realize that makes me a bit of an outlier. But I close these prompts because, well, I’m already on the website. And it tends to work just fine.
But not always. Sometimes, the website wants me to install the app — no, it needs me to install the app. It’s like a paywall, but for apps. An appwall.
Basically, I’m locked out of the website unless I stop what I’m doing, download their native application, and then use it to open the same content I was just trying to read.
I never do this. (But again, I’m probably an outlier.)
I want to pause here: I’m not railing against apps as such. I use plenty of native applications on my phone, on my tablet, and, yes, on my laptop. (I bet you do too.) But in recent years, these prompts have gotten more prominent, and occasionally impassable. And I think that trend’s interesting. Why would a company promote a native app over their perfectly usable website?
We’d have to ask them, I suppose. But it’s hard not to see this as a matter of priorities: that these companies consider native applications worthy of their limited time, resources, and money. They’re a worthy investment, to hear these banners tell it. And I can understand that. After all, the overwhelming majority of digital advertising revenue goes to just two companies. (Or three.) Given that, I could see why a digital organization might search for revenue streams that rely less on display advertising.
Maybe those revenue streams rely on collecting other kinds of data.
But whatever the motives, that doesn’t mean these app prompts are a good experience. When responsive design first became a thing, mobile websites were peppered with links to “the full website”…which invariably contained the content or features you actually wanted to access on your mobile device. In practice, this encouraged product teams to adopt device-specific design methods: features weren’t deployed to people, but to specific types of devices.
By and large, these app prompts feel like fancier versions of that old pattern. And when new product features are built on the native experience, I think it’s illuminating when they don’t make it back to the web.
It feels like a glimpse into that company’s design priorities. And it’s possibly providing us with insight into the business value they place on the open web — a medium that’s meant to be accessible everywhere, on any screen, on any device.
And it really does feel like these glimpses are becoming more common.
This content originally appeared on Ethan Marcotte’s website and was authored by Ethan Marcotte
Ethan Marcotte | Sciencx (2021-09-28T04:00:00+00:00) Locus.. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2021/09/28/locus/
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