Welcome to our Mobile Apps Blog Series. This is a series of 10 articles that are about mobile apps and how they can help you and your business. We will explore all the benefits of mobile apps, how mobile apps are relevant to your business, and help you to understand where this brave new tool is headed.

If you are interested in reading more about our Golf Course Apps please bookmark our blog or subscribe to our RSS Feed (it’s free) because we will be releasing a new article once a week for 10 straight weeks. So without further a due – let’s explore what a Golf Course Mobile App is and how it is different from a website.

A mobile application (App) is a piece of software developed for small low-power handheld devices such as the iPad, iPod Touch, iPhone or Android devices. These applications are either pre-installed on phones during manufacture or downloaded by the customer from a marketplace (ex. App Store or Android Market).

A website is a collection of files (pages) that are hosted on a server and require access through an Internet connection. These files can contain all sorts of information – text, pictures, videos, etc… The user can access these files through a browser (ex. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome) which renders the files based on the formatting that browser uses.

So what does that all mean? The short and sweet version is this – websites are great from the home and office (desktop) but software (Apps) are much better suited for on-the-go devices like a mobile or tablet. The main reason being is that when we are not restricted by the terms and limitations of the browser we can make that piece of software do almost anything that is required by the client.

An “App” can more easily and effectively use some of the most powerful features of a mobile device or tablet. Some of these features include dialing phone numbers, storing contacts, sending e-mails, taking pictures or video, using GPS, using the accelerometer, a cleaner user interface, native controls (swiping / animations, etc.) and no need for an Internet connection. All of these features are why more people use Apps on their phone when searching for information then use the phones native browser. Apps are faster, easier to navigate and allow the end user to get the information they need more efficiently.

This was an introduction to the Golf Course Mobile App Blog Series and hopefully you have a better understanding of the advantages of using an App as compared to just viewing a website on your phone. We will be going into much more detail each week as to how a Golf Course Mobile App for your golf course will directly benefit your facility.

Next week we will explore Golf Course Mobile Apps for the Public, Private and Resort sectors.