App for Your Business: Top Ideas on How to Save Money and Time
A modern enterprise can hardly be considered successful if it is not supplemented by a mobile application. Today, most of the world’s brands and firms have their own mobile showcase, ready-made for you to download from the AppStore or Google Play. Being a must-have of the client-oriented market, it is important to understand how the customer can save on developing a mobile application. In this article, let us introduce the possible ways to save money and understand the most typical mistakes of the companies that are trying to curb spending.
Mobile development is expensive
The reasons are clear: a relatively young market, new economy, and a disproportionality between supply and demand – there are very few quality developers, while the demand is colossal. Also, the high cost of the devices, for example, for an iOS-development, contributes to the high cost of the services: here you have powerful Macs and a full deck of devices for testing. Just visit the Apple Store page to guess the possible costs.
I need an app. How can I save my money?
Let’s try and break down what the cost of a mobile app is comprised of:
- 25% for management (preselling, negotiations, tender work, account management, project management, etc.);
2. 45% for development;
3. 30% for testing, acceptance.
The understanding of the cost structure will help you find the ways to save money – there are quite a few.
Idea #1: Hire freelancers
Economy: 80%.
Complexities: Freelancers are not interested in your product. Absolutely.
This is the first thing that comes to mind. In this particular case, you save on development, testing and, especially, on management. Obviously, it’s just hard to picture freelancers working on a big live project. When you have a long project with KPI set, working with a freelancer will result in a headache only. No other way.
Idea #2: In-house Project Manager + outsource studio
Economy: 40%.
Complexities: It’s hard to find a project manager.
Here you will save on management. Also, you can save on development, because any outsource studio will gladly provide you with programmers and testers, offering a budget curtailment equalling to 20-25%, since all the risks in this model will be carried by you.
If your project manager is skilful, you can save up to 40% of the cost, utilizing this model. If the manager is not so competent – you’re risking a lot, having a great chance of not getting the result at all. However, this model has already proven to be quite successful, resulting in a number of nice projects (e.g., Stakers Online Casino).
Idea #3: Find a small regional noname-studio
Economy: 40%.
Complexities: Few of these companies are competent enough, and those that are, are busy for years to come.
This is a lottery. And the chances of winning are not high. 95% of these companies do not have sufficient competence. Lacking an expertise in serious projects, they are ready to promise you a moon from the sky, if only they could get bonus payments from you. The remaining 5 percent of the companies are highly sought by the large customers from the US and Europe, leaving you a long chance to cooperate with each other.
Idea #4: Find a large regional vendor
Economy: 50%.
Complexities: few companies, the lack of the “close” dialogue.
Large regional vendors are the companies that are similar to yours, who have grown up large-scale production in the region, but who have not managed to enter large accounts without intermediaries and integrators.
In this model, you can save a lot and get a quality product.
Here you will likely get some technical perfection: a well-thought-out architecture, high quality, supported code, resistance to loads, fine testing, support.
Idea #5: Use a cross-platform engine
Economy: 35-50%.
Complexities: it is very easy to step on a rake using a cross-platform engine.
You can make the project either by native means, or you can utilize a cross-platform framework. With a chance to make the application very nimble and good-looking, the native framework allows you to solve almost any technical problem. The only negative sides are the duration and cost of app engineering.
With a cross-platform programming, everything is completely different. It is divided into at least two types: the first is just a webview with a site inside that resembles a mobile application, the second is a more advanced version when all interface elements are implemented natively, but the logic is different. Notably, Progressive Web Apps are skyrocketing among the developers and customers. To understand the concept of the PWA, just visit Casino at stakers.com from your mobile device.
Conclusion: Ideas to be avoided
To sum up, let’s recap several mistakes made by companies in an effort to save money on app development.
So, here’s what you need to avoid:
- Don’t skimp on the front-end processing. Think through your future service, how it should work, how you’ll monetize it?
- You can not save on testing. Several serious bugs in the application may result in the loss of a user forever.
- In-house development is not about saving. Sometimes companies decide to make a mobile application on their own. This may seem strange as even the least complex project involves a project manager, analyst, designer, developer, and a testing engineer. Such wasteful activity makes sense when the mobile application stands as an extremely important source for working with the client.
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