A strong digital presence is essential for reaching today’s consumers. Unsurprisingly, many companies put a lot of effort into their website content to ensure it resonates with their target audience and performs well for SEO.

However, as important as a website, it doesn’t necessarily cater to how many of today’s consumers want to interact with brands — especially while using smartphones. In 2022, only 8% of Android users’ time was spent using mobile browsers. The other 92% of the time was spent on mobile apps and gaming.

For businesses, this demonstrates that in addition to their website, using a webview app could be one of the most important investments for driving awareness, engagement and growth.

What Is a Webview App?

Webview is a component that began as part of the Android OS to enable app developers to display web content within an app. With this setup, a typical web browser, like Safari or Chrome, isn’t needed to display the content. Instead, the website’s content is displayed within the app itself on an embedded browser. Users get all the functionality of the original website, but they don’t have to deal with browser tabs or address bars.

The web browser user interface is replaced with a branded, mobile app-specific interface. This is an important element of a webview app because, for example, to fulfill the Apple App Store guidelines, a webview app must have additional functionality beyond just displaying website content. 

As a result, webview apps typically incorporate native tab menus, mobile logins, and app-specific navigation. Like native apps, webview apps are downloaded to a smartphone or tablet, and once installed, will have a launcher icon on the device. Essentially, while the content displayed is largely the same as a website, the experience is similar to how users would expect to interact with other apps.

Webview apps are more common than you might expect. Many social media apps and apps for The New York Times and major brands like United Airlines use webview components to seamlessly deliver website content to the end user as part of their mobile app experiences. Webview apps are especially popular in e-commerce, as this setup can help simplify integrating secure payment and checkout.

Reaching Your Customers Where They Are

At its core, the chief advantage of using a webview app is that it makes it much easier for a business to reach customers on their smart devices, which best reflects how they want to use them. For example, the Walmart app has an average of 120 million monthly users, illustrating how many customers prefer an app to a browser for mobile e-commerce.

Regardless of the specifics of your website content, the ability to deliver that content to people in an app experience can go a long way in improving overall engagement levels. By making your content easier to access and navigate than with a mobile web browser, users will spend more time with your content, making them more likely to make a purchase or take other actions that drive revenue growth.

It’s also worth noting that using a webview app can be an extremely cost-effective method for app development. Webview apps use a single code base, unlike custom-coded native apps, which require separate code bases for iOS and Android. Better yet, when you update your website content, the app’s content is automatically updated as well. This is also true of custom features that might be a part of your website.

This makes webview apps much cheaper (and faster) to launch and update. Because content updates are implemented automatically, you can have confidence that your app users always view your content’s most accurate and up-to-date version. 

For example, when The New York Times publishes a new article on its website, it will also appear on the webview app. The publishing team doesn’t have to go through the extra step of updating the app with the new article. For e-commerce businesses, this synchronization means you don’t have to worry about an app customer accidentally purchasing an item listed as out of stock on your website.

Expanding Your Digital Reach

Ultimately, a webview app doesn’t replace your website. Instead, it acts as a way to extend the reach of your website content even further. By using a webview app for your business, you will be better positioned to reach mobile users, while having an easier time updating content across both channels to deliver a consistent branded experience.

In this manner, your business can become more digitally oriented and impact potential customers more than ever. It shows customers that you value their experience, regardless of their device. In a time when users expect their favorite websites and brands to offer an app for quick and easy use, bolstering your digital presence with a webview app could be one of the most important actions you take.

Published By: Aize Perez