When business owners order a mobile app development service for their company, they always risk overpaying or saving too much. If they spend too much, their resulting app may not pay off and will significantly affect their company’s budget. If they are too keen on saving, they risk ending up with useless and non-functional code unable to solve the tasks the product was created for.
At Lvivity, we have been engaged in mobile app development for many years, and this article of ours will explain how to retain the balance of saving and functionality: spend a minimum of money and get everything you need.
We are talking about money-saving but not at the expense of quality. Consequently, even with lower expenses, you will still obtain a quality, functional, and user-friendly mobile app. The product, actually, may lack 100% perfection, but this is the case where a compromise is more than appropriate.
Read about several ways of achieving it below.
Basic Functionality
It is about those basic features without which the mobile app will not perform the essential functions it was created for. Be it an e-commerce software product or a food delivery or service ordering app, it must have cart functionality and connected gateways for online payments.
Nevertheless, customers sometimes somehow manage to release a product with dozens of different features, but, for some reason, none are really vital to the target audience. Our next paragraph will dwell more on this issue.
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Preliminary Market and User Needs Research
This heading presumes the Discovery Phase in software development. It is essential to discover the target audience for your mobile app, find out its crucial functionality, analyze competitors’ products, and determine the processes you need to automate using this app.
Work like this will cost a pretty penny: you may need to carry out a survey or pay a marketing advisor for the respective research. Skipping this phase, you risk creating a mobile app with dozens of redundant functions and none necessary.
Business owners will most certainly win from their or their project managers’ communication with the development team. Moreover, it is also critical to involve their marketing experts in the project as they are immersed in it and understand its target audience well.
UI/UX Design
Even the best functionality will not create the desired effect if your app is awkward and looks ugly. Design is like a face for your mobile app, actually, its backbone. You cannot ignore the principles of interface development when designing a UI. Otherwise, your product will look “cheap,” and users will not like it.
Mobile app design does not have to be complicated or “premium.” Primarily, it should be pleasant and help users solve the tasks because of which they install your application.
Want to start a project?
Our team is ready to implement your ideas. Contact us now to discuss your roadmap!
Testing and Support
If there is a desire to save the budget, there is often a temptation just to skip this stage: everything seems working, things look favorable, and it looks like you are ready to release the app. However, that is not the right way to do it because some critical errors and security flaws may manifest themselves when users start running your app. These shortcomings will result in losses for your company.
Generally speaking, no one will use your app if it has serious issues. That is why we never remove testing from the development estimate and do not recommend saving on it.
A Short Checklist: How Not to Exceed Budget When Developing a Mobile App
- Determine what features are definitely necessary, who your audience is, and why people will use your product.
- Decide whether you want to have your app developed separately for different platforms (iOS, Android). Most often, you will not need it, as cross-platform apps can solve most business tasks perfectly well.
- Make all the design materials ready: brand books, logos, and everything else commonly used in marketing.
- Contact a good, not necessarily large IT company — when you work with a small agency, you will reduce expenses without losing quality.
- Never save on design, testing, and critical functions — you should always have these things done perfectly.
If you are planning to create a mobile app for your company and are looking for a reliable technology partner to make your idea come true, contact us, and we will help you make your plans a reality.
