10 Ways to Reduce Mobile App Development Costs

Any business pursues quite an obvious goal — to reduce mobile app development costs. The limited budget is one of the reasons why some customers refuse to develop a project, losing new business opportunities.

However, since the product development process consists of several stages, you will be able to significantly reduce the time and money costs if you understand the features of each particular stage.

In this article, we will talk about ways to reduce mobile app development costs without losing the coming product’s quality.

1. Make Detailed Requirements Specification

Software engineers are not mind readers. So the more vague the customer’s requirements, the more unpredictable the end result.

Describe your project in detail:

• What is the purpose of the application development;
• What tasks it solves for the user;
• What devices/platforms it will work on;
• What functionality needs to be implemented;
• Examples of apps developed by competitors;
• Describe your app idea and its unique value proposition;
• Brand book, design requirements, etc.

With a detailed project description, developers can more easily estimate implementation costs, development time, and answer other important customer questions.

2. Start with One Platform and MVP

MVP (minimum viable product) is the product working prototype, using which it is possible to test market demand before a full-scale launch. The main goal of MVP is to test the software idea spending minimal cost. We can name Foursquare, Uber, and Snapchat among the well-known apps which started as MVP. The MVP approach is an effective strategy for reducing app development costs by validating the app idea before full-scale development.

It is better to spend a certain amount of money and understand that a specific idea or feature is not in demand than to spend ten times more money and then come to the same conclusions.

The first version should have maximally reduced functionality and include only those features which are most necessary for the target audience. Launch your app to the market with 1, 2 to 5 main functions and implement the rest ones in subsequent versions when you are completely confident in the main product.

3. Use Cross-Platform Technology to Reduce Costs

You can create any app, using a native programming language or, alternatively, using a cross platform app development framework. Native tools allow you to solve almost any technical problem, make your app fast, and maximize system capabilities.

There are some disadvantages though — development cost and duration. On the other hand, cross-platform technology allows you to save your budget and speed up the finished product release. However, this approach demands some compromises. We have a dedicated article covering this topic on our blog, and we recommend you to read it — “Mobile Cross-platform App vs. Native App — What’s The Difference in Development and Which One is Better?”.

4. Outsource App Development

By outsourcing your project to a mobile app development company, you can significantly reduce mobile app development costs. Teams located in Eastern Europe can offer the same high-quality services as companies from the USA, UK, or Great Britain. Moreover, their work will cost 2 to 3 times lower.

In this context, we recommend you to pay attention to IT companies from Ukraine because this country has a low cost of living and a good specialized education. You can read more about this in our article “9 Reasons Why to Outsource your App Development to Ukraine”.

5. Optimize User Scenarios

You can implement similar mobile application functionality with one or five screens. The implementation time and testing will be different, of course. So will the budget.

A well-thought-out design phase can optimize user interaction with the application and reduce the number of screens a designer needs to develop. This approach will result in lower development costs. Optimizing user scenarios is a critical part of the app development process that can lead to significant cost savings.

6. Stick to Apple and Google Guidelines

Mobile apps developed in compliance with OS developers’ guidelines look good, and their design is familiar to users. It is easier for people to predict elements’ behavior and arrangement, and that means they can solve issues faster and get the best overall user experience from the app.

iOS and Android developers are interested in creating a single app ecosystem. That is why they provide developers with ready-made graphical components assembled into a design system and recommend them to use it.

7. Pay Attention to Ready-Made Solutions

There is no point in reinventing the wheel when the desired task can be efficiently solved using ready-made elements and frameworks that require only configuration procedures for a specific project. This is one of the easiest and most helpful tips to reduce the cost of mobile application development.

There are frameworks, libraries, APIs and other solutions available to implement specific features, which will simplify your task. If you work with an experienced development team, they will be able to advise you when it is worth developing a component from scratch and when it is better to use a ready-made solution.

8. Use an Iterative Approach

Instead of the traditional approach of building a fully functional product, testing it, and then launching it, it is worth considering the Agile technique. It will be a much better choice in terms of reducing risks and overall costs.

Using this approach, you will need to first think about a full-scale idea together with the contractor, and then break this idea into separate versions. The number of versions depends on the size of the idea. Usually you will come up with 2 to 4 versions (or even more).

Therefore, you can always reconsider the number of functional features of subsequent versions and the priority of their implementation, depending on external factors, changing needs, as well as live communication with real users, after you have released your mobile application in its first version.

9. Never Save on Quality Testing

If your project is not large, you might think you need no QA specialists at all or need just minimal testing procedures. However, it is not so, and the testing process is a lot more complicated than it actually seems.

Errors and flaws during the development process can lead to additional costs after the release, provoke a negative reaction of users, and damage your company’s reputation. Ample attention to quality assurance will allow you to avoid all these troubles.

10. Hold Off on Deadlines

It is not worth urging developers and demanding the fastest possible release of a product in its working version. Hastiness may lead to quite an opposite result — the product will turn out to be bad or fail to work the way customers expect it to work.

Developers often have to sacrifice quality for the sake of development speed, and under pressure of time, they may make mistakes which will take more time to fix than you will manage to save. Besides, customers themselves will just have no time to sufficiently delve into all the nuances of work.

Summary

Although creating an IT product does not come cheap, with the right team and the right approach, you can possibly save on mobile app development without losing quality.

By following these strategies, you can effectively manage your mobile app development cost without compromising on quality. The right technology choice, observance of guidelines, optimization of functionality, detailed development planning, and several other tips from our article will help you implement your project and get the most out of your investments.

If you are looking for a reliable and experienced team which you could entrust your product development, send us a request with your project description, and we will help you implement everything the best way possible.