When a link is enough

An installed app is a commitment: store accounts, review, an icon, and a reason for someone to give you a home-screen space. A link is a page. For a lot of organizations the page is the whole product.

Stay with a link when

• People need the information once, at the door, on a poster, or in a ticket email.
• You cannot name a weekly editor.
• You do not have a message that deserves a push.
• The useful action is reading, not installing.

Add an icon when

• The same people return on a schedule: a season, a commute, a weekly meeting.
• You will send rare, specific notifications and someone is accountable for them.
• The phone needs to do something the browser page will not, and you have watched that behaviour in a trial.

Do not run both as a promise you cannot keep

If the icon and the link can drift apart, pick one place where this week’s fact is edited and make the other read from it. Two back offices means the poster and the app will disagree, and visitors will believe whichever one is wrong.