Check account balance. Find a branch. Transfer funds. Compare a rate. Get a quote. Research a competitor. Make a payment, cash a check, follow a stock, etc., etc., etc. For just about any banking need, there's a mobile banking app or a website you can hold in the palm of your hand.
Mobile banking, particularly via smartphone, is quickly moving to the center of the online ecosystem. According to Nielsen, the majority of U.S. mobile subscribers will be carrying a smartphone as soon as the end of 2011. Gartner projects smartphone sales to more than triple by 2012, to 563.8 million from 172.4 million in 2009. And once users get a taste of always-anywhere connectivity, they're quickly hooked and would sooner run back home for a forgotten phone than a forgotten wallet.
The Dawn of the App Age
Customers have long been able to access their bank accounts from their feature phones. But the iPhone and the Apple App Store unleashed an explosion of mobile computing power and connectivity, opening the door to unimagined functionality and convenience. "There's an app for that" became the mantra of the connected cadre. But the rise of smartphones and apps - now no longer the exclusive domain of Apple - also introduced the age of mobile Web browsing. With every smartphone platform now supporting a bona fide Web browser, and touch screens maximizing viewable area, virtually the entire Internet is now the purview of handheld devices. But unlike the desktop, mobile users have two major avenues to access online content: apps and the Web browser.
It's not as simple as in the early days of the desktop Web, when the choice was only to do a website and how fancy to make it. In the early iPhone days, apps were the banker's golden ring, shiny and prestigious, a badge of forward-thinking techno-savviness, whether or not they moved the bottom line. Today, however, apps aren't quite the status symbol they used to be; but they've also grown beyond their novelty to become useful tools for banks' end users. At the same time, the mobile Web has become at least as important, or more so, in the world of mobile banking.
So the question of the moment is app, website, or both? Apps have a clear edge in caché and potential "coolness" factor, but require multiple builds and maintenance for each platform. Websites are enticing, with their potential to build once for all platforms, but with an overabundance of devices and software, that promise is still problematic. A hybrid approach combining app(s) and website(s) is the gold standard, but expensive and labor-intensive.
What Consumers Prefer
How do you arrive at a viable mobile strategy? It's up to you, the bank. Unfortunately, if you are looking to consumers to help solve the app-or-website dilemma, they're not going to be much help. Some demographic trends are fairly clear, but overall, consumer preference is not overwhelmingly in one camp or the other. Use cases drive many preferences. The same goes for developers and marketers.
A 2010 study by Keynote for Adobe Systems of 1,200 U.S. consumers found roughly equal satisfaction with app and browser experiences, and that users spend about an equal amount of time with each.
However, within financial services a majority clearly preferred browsers for many common activities, including reviewing bank account information and conducting bank transactions such as bill pay and money transfer.
Our advice: for broadest reach, biggest bang for the buck, most efficient rollout and maintenance, and searchable discovery, start with a mobile website. Then, if and when budget and resources allow, add individual apps for the major platforms serving your audience for enhanced user and brand experience.
