Thoughtful blogs for Purr
Tech agency Purr has been a friend for years, and this series of blogs takes its brand values to the world. The spice: blending my old-school ad agency learnings with the latest web thinking.
INTRO: Steve Jobs said, “There’s an app for that.” And look what happened to him.
Only joking. As a technology consultancy that is technical and works with marketing smarts, we’re great admirers of the late Apple CEO. But the truth is: while every business needs (at minimum) a site, not everyone needs an app to go with it.
Some put up a holding page on WordPress and focus all their energies on climbing the ranks at the App Store. While others treat their site as the be-all-and-end-all and concentrate on engaging customers without even optimising for mobile.
The crux: while applications and websites share some common ground, people use them in different ways for different tasks. So how do you decide which side you’re on? Site front, app centre, or a mix of both?
It might sound strange that an app-savvy agency might question your decision to develop an app. But at Purr our focus is on (. . . continue reading)
INTRO: Part 1 of this mini-series focussed on the options and opportunities when choosing between a mobile application and a website. In this second part, let’s explore the flipside: the costs and complications of shining online.
Because apps and sites don’t just answer different customer use cases – they carry different resourcing requirements too. While a website is an application, and a mobile app uses web technologies, the ways they’re conceived and executed differ. And if those differences aren’t understood, your journey to online success will contain more dragons than Skyrim.
What kind of dragons? Many companies have started with a simple site to keep costs low, only for it to cost them dearly as it frustrates their audiences. Others have specified apps that just replicated the website on a phone screen, and end up looking like they’ve timewarped to 2012. And nor is it limited to skimping on the upfronts.
Examples? A large one-off investment for the latest all-singing all-dancing proprietary platform may turn out dangerously reliant on a single technology, creating risks. Or a budget for a top-trafficked destination site bursting with Google juice may need a team of 30 university grads posting, tweeting, and ‘gramming late into each night in a desperate attempt to stay top-of-mind to ten million users.
So what’s the answer? As in Part 1, there’s no single one: it depends entirely on your circumstances. But there is a right way of thinking about it. It involves what you want from each channel; what success looks like from your audience’s perspective. And more.
Purr can help. But first, let’s run through the issues as we see them (. . . continue reading)
INTRO: Technology, of course, is about science and engineering. But it’s also about fashion. Trends ebb and flow, adoption rates boom and decline, download numbers rise and fall. And promising innovations are adopted with enthusiasm one year yet fall out of favour the next.
So for our new year blog, we’ve settled on 12 technologies and practises we think will be riding a hockey stick-shaped curve in 2022 – both upwards and downwards. Some you’ll agree with; others you won’t. And for at least one Purr seems to be in a distinct minority. (Spoiler alert: it’s number 8.) Plus a bonus 13th principle if you read right to the end.
Just be reassured: when you work with Purr, we always recommend the best tool for the job. But to do that, we have to maintain a critical eye on the market. And while we live and breathe technology, we don’t like everything we see.
Ready? Here’s the Purrview of what’ll be hot – and not – in (. . . continue reading)
Chris does Content 