Apps should not be used in place of corporate websites. Apps are useful to achieve a particular goal rather than disseminate general information about an organisation. Last year we wrote about some of the choosing between apps and mobile websites.

One of the primary reasons we are asked to build apps for our customers is because mobile websites may not be accessible due to restricted internet access while travelling. For example a sales rep with a tablet travelling in a rural area. Or an overseas traveller may require information without paying mobile roaming charges.

The obvious solution is to build an app that can be installed and viewed without an internet connection. But at the same time you would also like to be able to periodically update the content on these offline apps. That's where there work becomes a little more involved(=expensive).

We have devised a simple alternative solution that is the best of both worlds. This is actually a mobile website, but all pages are still viewable without an internet connection. The only provisos are that the website must be simple and that your users must access the website once before they go offline.