{"id":393741,"date":"2022-01-14T01:27:44","date_gmt":"2022-01-13T22:27:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/dear-websites-please-stop-asking-me-to-download-your-mobile-app\/"},"modified":"2022-01-14T01:27:44","modified_gmt":"2022-01-13T22:27:44","slug":"dear-websites-please-stop-asking-me-to-download-your-mobile-app","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/dear-websites-please-stop-asking-me-to-download-your-mobile-app\/","title":{"rendered":"#Dear websites, please stop asking me to download your mobile app"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Dear websites, please stop asking me to download<\/a> your mobile app<\/strong>”
\n<\/p>\n

\n Dear *insert website name,*<\/p>\n

Please stop asking me to your mobile app. I don\u2019t want want to use it. I don\u2019t care if you think your app is the bees-knees. If I wanted to use your app, I\u2019d go to the app store and download said app. But I didn\u2019t do that. Instead, I\u2019m writing this letter to make my stance clear:<\/p>\n

I prefer to access your service within the comfort of a browser, thank-you-very-much.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s fine to tell me to download your app the first time I visit your page, or even send me a reminder now and then. You have to let people know your app exists, sure. But constant reminders, massive banners, or worse, flat out preventing me from using basic features on your mobile site \u2014 looking at you, Reddit<\/a> \u2014 is just hostile.<\/p>\n

I get it. You paid developers a lot of money to create an app for the smoothest native software experience. You can probably implement fancier features. But I still don\u2019t want to use it.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the thing: an app may offer the best experience for your<\/em> app, but it\u2019s not the best experience for using my phone<\/em>. Guess which experience I care about more.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s phones are powerful enough to do a whole bunch of stuff that used to require a proper PC. And like on my PC, 80% of the stuff I do, I can do from a browser. It\u2019s nice to be able to keep various pages and services organized in one place, rather than switching between multiple apps for basic content consumption. The modern browser is basically an operating system within an operating system and oftentimes the in-app experience simply isn\u2019t superior enough to win over the convenience of just visiting a web page.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just an organizational preference. Quite often, I find being forced to use an app leads to frustrations and limitations I don\u2019t have to deal with in a browser. To list some off the top of my head:<\/p>\n