The Current HTML5 Landscape

In a world quickly moving toward mobile device adoption, there is a growing pressure for web developers to learn new languages in order to adapt to the ever-changing landscape of content delivery. For the past 16+ years, web has been the king of mass distribution. But now as app stores on mobile devices are driving huge monetization opportunities, how do web developers stay competitive in this new “post PC world”? The key is to understand how you can maximize your web app’s potential in the distribution vs. monetization model.

The Distribution Vs. Monetization Model

As developers look to create new content, be it a web app or native app, they should be thinking about the following model:

The distribution vs monetization model.

The concept is that the larger your distribution base, the better your chances of monetization are. Along the far side of the x-axis is the native mobile and tablet space, which is fragmented around several different platforms, and the individual platform distribution potential is much smaller. On the flip side, since all mobile devices and computers have web browsers, an online web app’s potential reach is staggering.

The reality of this however has been that even with the smaller distribution of mobile, developers are seeing much higher opportunities to monetize on those devices. On the web, we have seen more difficulty to monetize that content without the help of built-in systems like IAP (in app purchase) or integrated checkout, which are generally available on native devices through their app stores. The ideal solution would be to actually target both demographics, and the only platform we have seen that is capable of effectively doing that is HTML5.

Scaling Your Web App

When most developers hear “scaling a web app” they instinctually think about the backend or server side of things. But over the past year as responsive design has come into its own, we are finally seeing websites that can not only run on desktop browsers but elegantly reconfigure themselves to accommodate all the different viewports users are visiting with.

The most common responsive design resolution breakpoints.

The forethought that goes into building a truly responsive design that flows correctly from desktop to mobile phones is no small task but the opportunity for capturing the largest possible distribution is worth it. Gone are the days of splitting off your web traffic between a mobile only site and a desktop site because the cost of maintaining both grow exponentially. But what about still reaching native app stores?

But What About Still Reaching Native App Stores?

Some of the current solutions on the market for publishing HTML5 content next to native apps have revolved around the PhoneGap/Cordova model. These allow the developer to package the web app and submit it to a native app store. But there is one glaring downside to this kind of distribution; you lose the ability to maintain a single codebase. In an ideal world, you would want to simply redistribute your online app in a mobile store and keep the two in sync. This is some of the thinking behind our HTML5 web app resources for Amazon Appstore.

Own Your Content and Keep it Online

The last thing a developer would want to do is fork a project and end up maintaining multiple code bases to support each platform it is distributed on. So why not just keep your content online where it will get the largest potential for distribution and still submit it to an app store that offers you an entirely new way to monetize it? This is a fairly new publishing model that has been growing more and more popular over the past few years. It offers the best of both worlds since you maintain a single place were your web content can live and you gain the added benefit of being able to distribute your app in a native store. With that distribution comes the potential of increased monetization by simply charging for the app, using IAP or continuing with your current ad based model.

The best part is that you can experiment with this new type of distribution today in the Amazon Appstore with our HTML5 Web App Tester. Simply download the app, point it to your site’s URL and test out how your web app works. From there it’s easy to submit to the Amazon Appstore and begin reaching a whole new audience.