There is only one way to answer the question: Does my company need a mobile app? And that is: It depends. It depends on a lot of things going on in your company and the type of business you’re in, so in order to answer the big question, you’re going to need to ask yourself a lot of lesser questions and keep probing until you have enough answers to get past the doubt.

Let’s start with some basic questions: Do you think that your business will benefit from having an app? Will the benefits outweigh the costs? What are your competitors doing and how will that impact your decision? These are not easy things to figure out, but perhaps using an analogy will help. Not too long ago, businesses didn’t have websites. If someone wanted to find your business they had the Yellow Pages and, if you could afford it, paid advertising in various media.

Today, you’d have a hard time finding a business that didn’t have a website. They’re just too valuable a tool for connecting with customers. Your business has a website and your competition does, too. Well, mobile activity is proceeding at a pace similar to the desktop/laptop activity of only a few years ago, and it may overtake it in the very near future. If you believe that most of your consumers will be on their smart phones most of the time, then you may well want to engage with them in that manner. And if your competition is already there, then you definitely need to consider having your own app, as well.

Today, the sectors that are most aggressively producing apps are restaurant and retail. Restaurant apps make it easy for users to find locations, review menus, place orders, and make reservations. Retail apps are very convenient when looking for a specific product or comparing prices. They are also used to find offer codes and coupons. And, of course, some companies, such as Uber, are totally dependent on their app. All these apps have specific purposes. So another crucial question you need to have a good answer to is: “What will your app do?” If you can’t readily explain your app’s purpose, you need to go back to square one.

Here’s another good question: “Is your current website ‘responsive,’ meaning does its layout adjust according to what device is being used to access it?” In the very recent past, most website interfaces were designed to work with a keyboard and a mouse on a large screen only; they didn’t work well on mobile platforms. But a responsive site can be accessed on a desktop or a smart phone and the interface will be optimized for each different device. If your business already has a website that’s mobile-friendly, an app might be superfluous; especially when you consider that apps have to be written and maintained for different platforms (iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, etc.), but responsive websites are all-inclusive.

Finally, here are a few more questions that you should consider that relate directly to the consumers you would be trying to engage with your mobile app: 1) “Will your app make life easier for them?” 2) “Will your app make life less expensive for them?” 3) “Will your app make life more fun for them?” Remember, there are already thousands and thousands of apps out there. The world is not screaming for another one – unless of course, it can answer all of the above questions, positively. Then there’s always enough room for one more good one.

This list of questions is by no means exhaustive. But they are the kind of business questions you need to start asking yourself before going to the expense of creating and maintaining an app that might not amount to much more than an icon on page five on someone’s smart phone. If, when all is said and done, you can undeniably ascertain that an app will benefit your company because you believe it will make more than it costs in the long run, and that if you don’t have one you will lose ground to your competition, than you can pretty much conclude that you need it. But ask the questions, first.