Why are 74% of the top 50 retail apps hybrid?
Native apps are built in native code … like Java for Android apps. Hybrid apps are built in web technologies like HTML and Javascript. Increasingly, big brands and enterprises are building hybrid apps. That includes giant companies like
Amazon … Walmart … Nike … Target as well as tech companies like Etsy … Groupon … and emerging brands like sneaker superstore GOAT … pet food company Chewy … and more.
Get the full transcript at FollowAnalytics’ website …
Listen to the episode here
Watch the full video
Episode overview and highlights
Big names from across the globe have realized that hybrid apps can help their brands speed the time to market with full-featured, fast, flexible apps. Brands have spent a decade building e-commerce sites and rebuilding all of that in native code on multiple mobile platforms is super costly in terms of time and money.
One major reason?
Speed of development:
We interviewed multiple companies for this and we saw a lot of variation here. Some companies said, hey, it was a 2X speed increase. Some said 5X. There was even one company that said it was a 10X speed upgrade, and we’ll get into some of those stories as well as we go through this. It depends on the exact project. It depends on what you bring to your project as well, and it depends on the platform that you’re using.
One super interesting story that made it into the research was Iterate.ai, and the CEO there is Jon Nordmark who used to be the CEO of eBags, right, which was acquired by Samsonite. They were working with a major retailer, $60 billion in annual sales. So this is really, really high level territory, right? There’s not many companies out there with $60 billion in annual sales. It was an e-commerce project and they had estimates of a year to prototype it — one year to prototype it.
You know, I mean, that’s the type of estimate that maybe you worked in the 1970s, maybe in the 1980s or something like that. It does not work in the 2020s. You cannot spend a year developing some new mobile store or e-commerce application, and bring it out and hope to be relevant in the market.
So in any case, in this scenario, they wrapped it up in 11 days — 11 days. The estimate was a year to prototype, they wrapped it up in 11 days. So, I didn’t even calculate what the speed advantage is there, what the multiplier is there, but it’s huge. And that was also with a brand-new BOPIS or, you know, buy online pickup in store, or curbside pickup infrastructure capability.
So, pretty amazing, pretty incredible. It’s not just about the speed, but the speed is a big driver because, guess what? When you’re faster you can do a lot more, and you can try a lot more too.