Apps are great and can provide a lot of benefits but before you look into developing an app for your business, we want to make sure it’s the right decision.
You see, for a while, apps were cool. There was a flood of apps hitting the market and, quite honestly, lots of companies wasted a lot of money with apps.
When you develop an app, there are some things to think about.
First, there’s a lot of development time. Planning has to be done before any coding is done. This requires a flow chart and wire frames and mockups. This takes some time to do as they are basically the blueprints.
Second, you want native apps for each platform. Maybe you’ll just start with the iPhone and release an Android version later (or vice versa) or maybe you want to develop both at once. Either way, you want a separately coded app for each platform. Using the same code base for different platforms is a recipe for disaster. You’ll run into problems and errors, which creates frustrated customers and staff. Don’t do it.
Third, should you build an actual app for a device or should you build a web app? With a web app, it’s basically a website that works well on mobile devices. It can work almost exactly like an app but be much cheaper to develop and maintain.
Fourth, there’s maintenance. Apps and web apps need to be maintained. Updates to operating systems will come out and the code will need to be adjusted for it to keep working into the future.
Don’t get us wrong – we do want to work on apps but we’re careful to explain all the details to our clients before they embark on these kinds of projects so that there are no surprises later on.
When we develop an app, there will be several steps. That process might look like this:
There may be more steps needed – depending on the app but you can expect a development process similar to what’s stated here.
We are able to help you maintain your app. This will include keeping the app compatible with the latest operating systems as well as adding or refining features. We’ll help you set up a plan and budget for app maintenance to help ensure your app continues to operate smoothly, doing its job.
If you’re interested in app development, please contact Webstix today and let’s discuss what you need. We’ll look over what planning you’ve done and then come up with a proposal for you.
If you haven’t done adequate planning, we can first help with that, which will be phase one. At the end of that phase, you’ll have a spec that you can either shop around or one that we will give you a proposal on.
Either way, contact us and let’s talk. We can show you sample apps related to your project once we find out what kind of app you would like developed.