Most people do not want your app
Most people do not want your app. They want the outcome. The app is just the path.
Yet many companies design the experience as if the download itself were the goal.
You click a link expecting to do something simple and immediately hit the wall: install the app, open the App Store, download, install, create an account, go through onboarding, then finally do the thing you came for. Nine steps before value.
Inside the company this looks great. More installs. More MAU. Nice dashboards trending up.
From the user’s perspective it looks like obstruction.
The worst culprits are platforms that deliberately cripple their web experience to push installs. Yelp, Instagram, Reddit, Inc.. Try browsing normally and within a couple of clicks you hit the “open in the app” wall.
This reveals a deeper strategic misunderstanding. Many teams optimize for install metrics instead of task completion. The hidden assumption is that the app itself is the product. In reality it is just a container.
A better way to think about it is simple: design for intent completion, not installs.
When someone arrives with a specific goal, let them achieve it immediately on the web. If the product becomes part of their routine, the app will naturally make sense.
Apps work best when they provide a clear advantage: repeated usage, speed, offline capability, hardware integration, or notifications that genuinely matter. In those cases the app removes friction instead of adding it.
The strategic question is not “how do we get more installs.”
It is: does the app make the job meaningfully easier for the user?
If the answer is yes, people will install it willingly. If the answer is no, forcing the download only reveals the real problem.