First Coast Creative recently had the opportunity to create a Mobile Web Application for www.greezmonkey.com.

Greezmonkey is a web based service provider of local automotive repair shop estimates. The site provides end users with the ability to search for repair shops based on their GPS location and quickly submit estimate requests for various services. There is also social networking component that integrates with Facebook as well as a crowd sourcing component that allows for user generated ranking.

First Coast Creative built the full web application and leveraged the backend database to serve up user content onteh mobile applciation. The budget for the project was narrow, since Greezmonkey is still in prototype mode. First Coast Creative successfully developed a functioning application that met all of the user requirements and the client is now fully launched with a beta version of the service.

Mobile Web Apps vs Native Apps

It is important to remember that a mobile web application is nothing more then an extension of your main website. The user interface is designed specifically to make your content more accessible on phones and tabular PCs (ex. iPad). Typically the menu navigation and image sizes on a regular website are not optimized for mobile interaction. Larger link buttons and smaller image sizes are two important aspects of an efficient mobile site. Search Engine Ranking is another important consideration of a mobile web application. Since virtually all major search engines (ex. Google) use some form of geolocation technique to serve you relevant results, the content on your mobile site should anticipate this and taylor it’s content accordingly. Cross browser functionality is important as well, since mobile devices use different browsers and these browsers render content differently.

A native mobile application may appear to look the same as a mobile web application but there are some very fundamental differences. In the case of Greezmonkey we decided to prototype the web application first, then measure utilization and from there create a strategy to maximize development costs. This is an important step because native applications cost more to develop. For example, even though there are ways to generate the same code from various development tools, the effort to create a native mobile application is much greater. One main reason is the fact the that the code is more complex. Also the actual binary that runs on a iPhone is different then the binary that runs on a Andriod phone – so you are actually maintaing multiple code bases. However, there are significant advantages to creating a native application because they are much more powerful and much faster.

Most developers agree however that if your site is just serving up “brochure” content, a native application is probably overkill. Or, as in the case with Greezmonkey, if you are not sure who your target end user will be, it might make more sense to start with a mobile application first. If you’re developing a mobile game (ex. Angry Birds) or a utility (ex. AirMousePro) that requires heavy graphics or interaction with any of the phone’s native features like the camera or contact database, then your almost always better off going native.