Does a professional-services firm need a mobile app?
An app is a commitment, not a campaign. Before a firm builds one, it should be able to name the audience, the repeat reason to open it, and the team that will keep it worth opening.
At HNTB, my role covered content across the firm's digital platforms — the website, the corporate social channels, email, and the HNTB mobile app. That last one tends to surprise people. Engineering firms aren't usually thought of as app companies, and the question I hear most often from peers is some version of: should we have one?
My honest answer is that it depends less on technology than on three questions most firms skip.
Who is it for, specifically?
"Our clients" is not an audience for an app. Clients visit a firm's website when they're evaluating, researching or checking a reference. That's episodic behavior, and the web is built for it. An app earns its place on a phone only when a specific group of people needs something from you repeatedly — employees who want company news and resources in one place, recruits moving through a hiring process, attendees at an event, field teams who need quick access to tools.
If you can't name that group and describe what they'll do on a Tuesday, you don't have an app audience yet.
What brings them back?
A website can succeed with visitors who come once. An app can't. Someone has to choose to install it, give it a spot on their home screen, and open it again next week. That means the app needs a reason to exist that the website doesn't already serve better: timely updates, a directory, content built for mobile reading, something that genuinely saves time.
Phones are the default screen for a huge share of people — Pew Research Center reports that 91% of U.S. adults own a smartphone — but that's an argument for a site that works beautifully on a phone, not automatically for an app.
The first question isn't "can we build an app?" It's "what would make someone open it twice?"
Who keeps it alive?
This is the part that decides everything. An app is a channel, and channels need content, updates, testing across operating systems and devices, and someone who watches how it's used. When the launch team moves on and nobody owns the content, the app becomes the most visible outdated thing a firm has — sitting on people's phones, reminding them of it.
Before building anything, I'd want to know who writes for it, how often, how it connects to the content the firm is already producing for web, social and email, and how success will be measured. If those answers are vague, the app will be too. It's the same lesson I've written about for websites: the build is the easy part; the operating model is what lasts.
Consider the lighter options first
For many firms, the need behind "we want an app" can be met with less: a mobile-first website, a well-structured employee intranet, or a progressive web app that installs from the browser and works offline without a trip through the app stores. These options share one content system with the website, which means one place to update and one voice to keep consistent.
None of this is an argument against apps. Done for the right audience, with a real reason to return and a team that owns it, an app can be a genuinely useful channel — especially for the people inside a large, distributed organization. It's an argument for deciding on purpose.
A simple test
If you're weighing an app, try writing one paragraph that answers: who it's for, what they'll do in it every week, and who updates it every week. If that paragraph is easy to write, you may have a strong case. If it isn't, start with the website — and make every channel work harder together before adding another one.
Sources and further reading
- Pew Research Center, Mobile Fact Sheet
- web.dev, What are Progressive Web Apps?