I work at a small business, and our customers are constantly asking that we make an app. We have a fully functional website that is completely responsive, and we do more mobile sales than desktop. But they keep asking for an app. I have no idea why- I guess it feels more "legitimate" than a website. I try to politely explain that I'm our sole developer, and I'd have to support the website, AND an iphone app, AND an android app, and they pretend to understand, and say "yeah, but an app would be nice...".
I mean, do you want the app so you can have an app, or do you want the app so you can make a purchase? I don't understand.
Same here, except I had someone make native apps. They were bad and unmaintained for a long time (solo dev here as well, running a small business). But still, people used this Android app that didn't receive updates for 4 years(!) over a mobile website where I put a lot of effort into.
At some point, I gave up. If apps is what people want, I make apps. After a looong process of deciding between native and hybrid (build with Ionic), I finally settled on Ionic. The result is actually quite okay. People love it. I can maintain two platforms with a single code base and will probably rewrite parts of the web app with Node so that I can share core code between 3 platforms.
How all of this will turn out in the long run, I don't know. Maybe I'll outsource app development at some point again in the future, now that I have a working product that is exactly as I want it to be.
Seriously, consider releasing a Cordova-based app. Slap some functionality on top so that it won't be rejected by Apple (Website-only wrappers aren't allowed). Maybe an offline storage or whatnot. This shouldn't take too much effort and you might be surprised that new customers find their way to your business.
I suspect they want the app to have an easy access icon on their home screen. I don't think most people know you can save a shortcut as an icon from a given web page on their home screen.
I mean, do you want the app so you can have an app, or do you want the app so you can make a purchase? I don't understand.