Mobile Sites vs Mobile Apps – what’s the difference?

2012 promises to see an explosion in job seeking via mobile devices and the launch of many different mobile websites and applications designed to meet this need. But what’s the difference between an app and a mobile site and which is better for recruitment?

Both mobile websites and apps are accessed by mobile devices like Smartphones (eg iPhone, Android and Blackberry) and tablets (eg iPad).

A mobile website is the same as a standard website, except that it is especially designed for the smaller displays of handheld devices and their touch-screen interface. A mobile website should work on all standard mobile operating systems.

Applications (or apps for short) are small programmes that can be downloaded and installed on your mobile device. The app may pull content and data from the Internet, in similar fashion to a website, but an app will only work on the platform for which it is designed (eg an iPhone app will only work on an iPhone).

Although Apple products (iPhone/iPod/iPad) are the most popular mobile device used by not for profit employees, figures from TPP Not for Profit’s online visitors show that over 30% of them use a different type of mobile device. A role advertised on a iPhone app would therefore be missed by nearly a third of mobile jobseekers.

Pie Chart

An app user also has to actively choose to find and download an app, usually from an online store. Previous research from TPP has shown that only 39% of charity workers have ever downloaded an app, so this cuts down the potential audience for a role even further.

Mobile websites do not need to be downloaded and unlike apps, mobile websites can be updated instantly and can’t be deleted from a user’s phone or lost when they change devices.

Visitors can be easily directed to a mobile website through search engines, typing in the URL or using a QR code. To use TPP’s mobile site, simply visit www.tpp.co.uk on a Smartphone.

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