How To Get An App For My Business

Mobile application development has seen a major change in recent years from being a new and unfamiliar technology to being an essential tool for businesses. For this reason, companies are learning how to create mobile apps and leverage them. 

Businesses are leveraging mobile apps to provide new tools to improve employee efficiency, increase interactions with customers, and discover opportunities to create new sources of revenue.

With every release, smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices continue to advance in their capabilities, especially their computational power. As a result, companies began to create mobile apps that are much more sophisticated and superior in their offerings. 

Today, mobile apps come with a combination of capabilities for technologies such as the internet of things, machine learning, and augmented reality. 

As technology progresses at an exhilarating pace, mobile application development is also becoming more and more complex. Many organizations do not have the knowledge or resources to create an app for their business. 

This post will help you and your organization understand why you need an app for your business. And, as well as what’s involved in creating a mobile app.

Do I need an app for my business?

The short answer is YES! 

Aside from the soaring mobile app market, here are a few reasons why businesses should get into the app action:

• In 2022, it is estimated that mobile users will spend around $156.5 billion on the mobile app marketplaces, which stimulated businesses to create their mobile apps. 

• Mobile apps can improve customers’ experiences and enhance service and product marketing. 

When deciding to create an app, small business owners and startups should consider their: 

• Goal
• Target audience & their mobile app usage
• Development strategy and
• Budget  

They should consider creating a mobile app that improves customer experience and increases their business’s reach. 

Mobile apps have gained popularity as retail and marketing tools. 

These days, apps are being used by restaurants, flower shops, bars, medical professionals, hairdressers, and all types of community-based goods and services to improve the customer experience. 

Businesses can use a dedicated mobile app to assist current and future customers in a variety of ways. Your app can introduce potential customers to your business. 

A dedicated mobile app can better serve existing customers with: 

• special offers
• products and services promotion
• loyalty programs and 
• other perks for remote and in-store commerce 

Once you decide to make an app, the next thing you need to do is strategize your approach. 

Should you hire software developers to build an app from scratch or use an app builder to create one by yourself? 

AppMachine, GoodBarber, BuildFire, and Shoutem are today’s popular off-the-shelf app builders. These tools are excellent resources for small business owners who have enough time to learn and use them. 

But depending on whether you go for a do-it-yourself app maker, or hire an experienced software development company to custom-design your app, expect to plunk down a lot of money.

While the cost to build an app varies widely, development costs in the U.S. can go between $50 to $250 per hour.

Development costs for simple apps can go up to $60,000. In comparison, more complex apps can go up to six figures. 

A hybrid approach can economize and improve professional results. You can start by using a DIY app maker. There are app maker companies that also offer in-house development services. 

How to make an app for my business?

There are 6 steps that businesses should follow to create a successful app:

    1. Create a business strategy 

    2. Hire app developers 

    3. Budgeting & planning 

    4. App development 

    5. App Marketing 

    6. Support & maintenance

The focus of this post is on mobile apps and providing information on how to create an app for your business. But it also contains insights on creating other digital products such as web applications that can foster digital transformation. 

1. Create a Business Strategy 

Imagine building a house without a blueprint. While it can be done, there’s a higher chance you won’t be happy with the result. 

The same can be said with mobile app creation. Your app creation strategy must outline your goals, needs, and your methodology.

Define the needs of your business

As of this writing, there are around 5 million apps on major app stores. Besides, the rate at which many developers consider a financial success is less than 0.01%.

And so, your mobile application software must offer unique value to consumers or solve a particular problem to succeed in the mobile app market. Remember, mobile applications with unique concepts have a higher chance of success than those that duplicated existing app ideas.

Apps valued in the billions are successful because they address significant issues that affect millions of app users. If you’re developing an enterprise app for your customer and employees, your business needs must be genuine. 

On that note, you need to figure out your app’s intent. Every successful app has a defined purpose. 

It’s important to determine: 

• what specific problem your app solves
• what particular audience you’re targeting
• why its features and functionalities are important and 
• if similar apps already exist 

Conduct Competitor and Market Research

For over a decade, the Apple and Android app stores have seen apps come and go because they don’t come with unique concepts. Also, many Android and iOS apps did not offer any refinements over existing successful apps.  

In the middle of your research, you might stumble upon similar app ideas trying to solve the same problem. But this doesn’t mean you should abandon such a concept or idea. 

Who knows, your app might provide a better solution than its competitors. What’s even better? You could knock out the top competitor in your category.  

You need to conduct a competitor analysis. It can help you discover the strengths and weaknesses of existing mobile apps similar to yours. 

To learn what is involved in developing a successful app, you must research their: 

• pricing
• mobile app development team
• company culture and partnerships

There are resources to uncover how much money they put into their initial app development. By discovering how much money they raised to fund their business, you’ll have a better understanding of the investment requirements to build your mobile app.

Pre-Production Marketing 

There are certain marketing activities app owners need to do right after the app development stage. One is to register your app’s website domain name early in the process. You’ll need a domain name if you want to promote your app later on.  

Another thing you need to do is to verify that no other existing apps share your app’s name on both the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. 

If you’re a new business, we suggest you register your company before you launch your app. App stores require apps to register using a business name. 

Enterprise apps that are not for public use don’t need to have a registered domain name. But proclaiming your new app idea to your development team can help you set up your strategic goals. 

Further, interacting with your development team earlier in the app development process will make it easier for you to implement finished products in your organization. 

2. Hire App Developers

You can start to create your own mobile app once you have established your business strategy. Quality mobile apps require: 

• a good User Interface design
• Programming
• QA testing and 
• digital product management

It is highly unlikely that you’ll find a single app developer who can handle each phase of the app development process. You might want to hire an app development company for your app project. 

There are only a few options when it comes to hiring app developers.

In-house developers

In certain situations, an in-house app development team can be an excellent option. If you choose this route, you can employ exactly who you want and keep everything internal. That said, sourcing and building your development team can take several months. 

Aside from the basic mobile technologies, today’s apps include features for: 

• the cloud
• augmented reality
• the internet of things (IoT)
• machine learning and 
• artificial intelligence

Building a highly sophisticated app requires hiring a development team with diverse skills. If you’re based in a small talent pool region, obtaining the best developers can be a bit difficult and time-consuming. Ultimately, it may set you behind schedule.   

Moreover, having an in-house app development team can add fixed payroll costs. If you’re a small business or startup, your initial investment may increase because you have to provide: 

• equipment
• workspace
• benefits and 
• software licenses 

Further, after spending a great deal of time and effort building your development team, one or more app developers might leave for another job. Consequently, that will force you to constantly seek new developers to maintain a bench strength. 

Freelancers

A lot of mobile app development projects often need the skills of multiple freelance developers. While this option provides flexibility, it also presents many challenges at the same time.   

One challenge is the difficulty in finding freelancers in your time zone or geographical location. Also, managing freelancers from other countries is possible. But, it can present additional resource management and other challenges for your app project. 

Furthermore, many organizations hire freelancers with specialized skills for short-term projects. 

And so, if you choose the option to pursue freelancers to create apps for your business, we suggest relying on trustworthy platforms such as Indeed and LinkedIn. 

App development companies

A majority of companies rely on application development companies or agencies for their app projects. Hiring a mobile app development company eliminates the fixed costs that come with hiring in-house developers. 

Likewise, it gets rid of the challenges associated with hiring multiple freelancers and overheads in project management. 

Many app development agencies offer end-to-end services, which means they take your project from the app idea through the launch phase. Most of them have app development professionals with diverse skills that can support your app’s growing needs. 

Hiring an app development agency is your best option if you want to create an app but you lack the resources to oversee a technical team.  

Looking for the right app development agency for your project has its limitations, though.   

While Google Search is the best available option, it’s not a perfect tool when sourcing for technical teams. Even the local search results are not perfect as well. Oftentimes, the results include development companies from overseas.

Additionally, many agency directory websites can’t determine the exact locations of some app development agencies. And in some cases, some of these directory listings are manipulated to mislead internet users. 

The best places to search for app development agencies are platforms such as LinkedIn and Apps Inc. The latter is a business directory strictly for US-based agencies.

Planning and Budgeting 

One of the primary reasons why many apps fail is inadequate funding. So, be sure to ask your development team to provide an estimate. If you choose to hire a development agency, make sure to get estimates from at least 3 different agencies. 

If there’s one common thing in many successful apps, it would be that they are of good quality. So, when you speak to these agencies for proposals and estimates, it is wise to consider the ones that offer comparable services. Additionally, one of their accomplishments should be creating successful apps. 

Making technology decisions is part of the estimation and budgeting process.

• Are you looking to build a native app or a cross-platform one? 
• Or do you want to build mobile-friendly / responsive mobile websites?
• If you want a native app, do you want to build it as an iOS app or for android apps? 
• Will your android and iPhone apps work for tablets, too?

Remember, your technology decisions will influence app pricing and timing.

4. Mobile App Development

The app development cycle includes 5 stages which are:

• Define
• Design 
• Develop 
• Test and 
• Deploy

Define

By now, you should already have a clear idea of the mobile app you want to develop. You might have already created top-notch functional specifications or an outline of how you want your app to look. In some cases, that information might be enough for developers to start building your app. 

For apps with low complexity and limited scope, you can use the Agile development processes to create iterations without gathering loads of information upfront.

More complex apps will need user stories or use cases to capture detailed business rules and functional requirements.  

Design 

App design isn’t something you’ll just add later. App users prefer products that offer a user experience that’s highly intuitive, with good performance, and a polished UI design. 

Following the development best practices, an experienced team of developers know how to design scalable and successful apps. Typically, the design phase focuses on both solution and visual designs. 

To create solution designs, your team of developers will identify an app’s 

• API design
• Database structure
• Technology stack and 
• Architecture

For visual designs, app designers for UI/UX can translate specific requirements into wireframes. These professionals typically use design tools such as Invision, Sketch, or Adobe XD. 

Remember, changing the designs after the app is built can cost a lot. And so, all your stakeholders should participate in this phase. They should provide feedback on the design before everything is finalized.

Develop 

You can create an app for your organization once when you’re done with your app design. Generally, an overall app development project can be broken down into smaller development stages for the front-end, API, and back-end. 

Also, the app can include services including:

• Push notifications
• Location tracking
• Multimedia
• Payment processing
• User authentication and 
• Usage analytics

Further, you can also include advanced features such as the internet of things (IoT), augmented reality, machine learning, and AI.

Your software development process should start with application architecture and technical analysis. 

Remember, don’t jump into programming after completing your analysis. You should prioritize your mobile app requirements and then create a plan for project delivery.

Segmenting your app project into smaller deliverables can help you keep on track with the app development. Moreover, you can use project management software to track application development activities and work assignments. 

Each of these applications has its unique features and you can pick one that’s best suited for your business. Some of the most popular project management apps include:

• Trello
• Asana
• Teamwork
• Jira and
• Pivotal

Test 

Quality Assurance (QA) testing ensures your app is stable, secure, and functional. A comprehensive app testing procedure often involves creating a testing plan and test cases. 

One of the best practices in terms of QA testing is to conduct various tests across each phase of your software development project. 

• User experience (UX) testing will verify your mobile app with app designs.  
• Functional testing will validate that each of your app features is working correctly. 
• Performance testing will confirm that your app loads quickly, it doesn’t drain your battery faster, and there are no memory leaks.
• Security testing checks for weaknesses or flaws in the app that can put user data at risk.
• Device testing will check if the app functions properly on all platforms and target devices.

Today’s apps depend on automation to reduce the efforts exerted on manual testing. Also, automation testing can simulate load testing and multi-user scenarios during the testing. 

We recommend that all your stakeholders should participate in the testing phase. All the feedback given in the test phase must be tracked, reviewed, and prioritized.

All the issues must be addressed before confirming that the app is completed. User needs and technology updates will drive changes in your app, keeping it relevant and fresh. 

Another important aspect to prepare for is app maintenance.   

Deploy

Releasing your native mobile app involves submitting it to the appropriate app store. An iOS app and Android app should be submitted to the Apple App Store and Google Play Store respectively. 

After submission, the app will go through a review process, which can take a few days to complete. You will receive a notification from the app stores if your app doesn’t meet their guidelines.  

You can resubmit your app after you addressed the issues outlined in the notification. If your app is approved, it will be available online and ready for download. 

If development includes back-end and database work, you will have to consider deploying them separately. 

Many businesses depend on cloud service providers to host their databases and web applications. Cloud hosting offers scalability and flexibility. Besides, it can also reduce upfront investment for software and hardware licenses. 

Some of the most popular cloud hosting platforms include:

• Amazon AWS
• Google Cloud and 
• Microsoft Azure 

Further, the identification of your onboarding process is part of your deployment phase. Enterprise app owners will need to conduct training sessions with external users and their employees. This will increase the rate of adoption and make your app successful.   

5. App Marketing

There are millions of apps on the mobile app market. While searching for a website in a browser is pretty straightforward, the same cannot be said when discovering apps in any app store. 

Unless your app is a high-ranking “featured app”, its chance of getting discovered organically is extremely low. With a marketing strategy, your app will appear in other marketing channels to increase its chances of getting discovered by your audience. 

A website can be an excellent channel for app promotion. It can help your audience understand what your app is about. 

Moreover, you can offer users the opportunity to join your email list. Also, you can use paid campaigns, content marketing, and social media to build your audience.      

It’s always a great idea to market your app before you launch it. What’s the use of having an amazing app when no one knows it exists? 

Pre-launch is crucial because it is the phase where you build brand awareness. It is the stage where you create a buzz about your products and services. 

Also in this stage, you might want to conduct some market research and competitor analysis to define your ideal customer. Consumer values, interests, and pain points can be easier to understand with the help of user personas. Use them to know where you’ll promote your app and to outline your messaging.  

After launching your app, you might want to concentrate on an acquisition strategy that will allow you to earn more downloads. Social media and paid campaigns can help you get your app in front of the right audience. Users can download your app to their mobile devices with just a few clicks.

You can partner with influencers to expand your reach. These people have an affinity for your app’s target audience. Since influencers have many followers, having them promote your mobile app and build trust with your audience is always a great idea. 

You can expand your reach even further with PR campaigns that target media outlets and publications. 

Many businesses focus on acquiring customers but not retaining them, which is a big mistake. 

But how do you convert customers to become ambassadors of your brand? 

One of the best ways to retain your customers is by two-way communication. Engage your audience in a conversation and listen to user feedback. Push notifications and in-app messages can help you interact with your audience. 

You should also consider using channels beyond the app ecosystem. Social media campaigns and email outreach are excellent methods of communicating with users. 

Implementing a marketing strategy for your mobile app will expand user growth and help you achieve your business objectives. 

Support & Maintenance

Your mobile app has been getting a lot of downloads and receiving enough positive feedback. But seeing your app achieve success doesn’t mean your work is complete. 

Many successful apps have a long-term strategy. In fact, software development is an ongoing process. There’s always room for improvement even if you think your original app is perfect.  

You must consider market demands, new competitors, user feedback, and advancements in technology.

App maintenance ensures your mobile app is compatible with new smartphones and tablets as well as the latest versions of Android and iOS platforms. 

Furthermore, bug fixes and security updates should be included in your app maintenance plan. 

Let Dom & Tom Build Your Mobile Apps on Google Play and Apple App Store 

Software development is becoming more complex with the continuing advancement in mobile technologies. Many organizations lack the skills and experience to make an app for their business.

They often fail in their attempts to create apps on their own. Their best option is to partner with a mobile and web development agency or build their own development teams to pursue their mobile development initiatives.

Dom & Tom has been working with companies across industries to make the app development process less complicated. Also, we implement custom mobile apps for small business owners and their customers.  

We have consistently delivered significant revenue growth for our clients over the years. We have the expertise and skills to turn an app idea into a successful mobile application. 

Reach out to Dom & Tom to learn more about our services, or to discuss how we make an app for your organization.