I just wanted to check your website. I didn’t want to download 200MB of software. I didn’t want another icon on my home screen. I definitely didn’t want to create an account, enable notifications and give you permanent residence on my phone.
I just wanted to see your menu.
Yet somewhere along the way, companies decided that allowing people to simply use their websites wasn’t enough. Visit a perfectly functional mobile website and you’re immediately ambushed: “OPEN IN APP.” “GET THE APP.” “THE EXPERIENCE IS BETTER IN THE APP.”
No. The experience was fine until you covered half the screen with a banner telling me the experience wasn’t fine.
The web already solved this problem
One of the web’s greatest features is almost embarrassingly simple: you click something and it opens.
No installation. No update. No App Store. No permissions. No commitment.
It’s arguably one of the best user experiences ever invented.
And somehow we’ve spent the last decade trying to break it.
Retailers want their apps installed. Restaurants want their apps installed. Airlines want their apps installed. Banks want their apps installed. Your grocery store wants an app. Your parking garage wants an app. The coffee shop wants an app so badly it’s prepared to make ordering coffee mildly irritating until you surrender.
There are legitimate reasons for apps. Some services genuinely benefit from offline access, deeper hardware integration, frequent notifications or functionality that doesn’t translate particularly well to a browser.
But “we would like to occupy space on your phone forever” isn’t a user benefit.
The app is often better — for them
Companies don’t push apps because installing one improves your spiritual wellbeing.
An app can create a more persistent relationship with a customer. It can keep the brand sitting on a home screen, make repeat purchases easier and—if users allow it—send notifications capable of dragging them back.
All perfectly understandable business goals. The problem begins when those goals are disguised as UX. If your mobile website already lets me read the article, buy the shoes, reserve the table or check my booking, repeatedly interrupting me to install an app isn’t improving the experience.
It’s advertising inside your own product.
Worse, the people being advertised to are already customers.
Please stop putting things between users and the thing they want
Web designers spend extraordinary amounts of time reducing friction. We optimize navigation. Shorten checkout flows. Improve Core Web Vitals. Test button placement. Simplify forms. Debate whether a signup needs six fields or five.
Then we greet someone with a giant banner asking them to abandon the website and install something else. It’s bizarre!
The best mobile website isn’t the one that most successfully funnels people into an app. It’s the one that makes people forget they’re using a mobile website at all. Fast. Clear. Responsive. Useful.
Give people an unobtrusive app link if an app genuinely offers additional functionality. Explain what they’ll gain. And then—this is the revolutionary part—let them say no.
Don’t ask again three pages later.
Websites don’t need to apologize for being websites
The industry’s obsession with apps has created the strange impression that the mobile web is merely a waiting room for the real experience.
It shouldn’t be.
A URL remains one of the lowest-friction ways humans have ever invented to access information and services. Click. Load. Done. That’s incredible.
So the next time somebody suggests covering 30% of a beautifully designed mobile site with an OPEN IN APP banner, perhaps the correct UX response is refreshingly simple:
Nobody wants your damn app.
Estudio EA