Mobile applications are now part of any conceivable business, regardless of their size and number of customers. A mobile phone is the easiest way to attract your customers, as well as attract new ones for your business. Mobile applications offer you a single platform with which you can manage many other processes, such as promoting your product; generating income through advertising in the application; offering discount and coupon codes; making your customers spread information on the Internet and so on. Therefore, creating a mobile application for your small business is definitely profitable. This is especially true if you run a small business and would like to attract more customers through a mobile channel.
Here are useful tips to help you create a mobile application for your business.
- Mobile is a must
A mobile phone is no longer just a luxury available to an exclusive class of society. Now it has become a necessity for users, developers and enterprises. Users who once viewed websites on their PCs now do it on their mobile devices. Everything, including payment, has now become mobile.
Therefore, it would be desirable for you to keep up with the times and adapt to the latest mobile technologies. It is no longer enough just to force someone to create an application for your business – you also need an IT team that is “literate on mobile devices” and can take care of such aspects of mobile application development as developing an effective mobile apps strategy, promoting the application and so on.
- Internal development team against outsourcing
While some companies prefer to create their own mobile device development team, it may be advisable for you to use a third-party team to help you create a mobile application. Most of the time, the company’s internal team will not be experienced enough to deal with all issues related to application development. On the other hand, hiring a professional will save you from all the problems associated with application development.
Hiring a freelance mobile developer is now quite possible and will also bring the desired results within a much shorter period of time. Hiring a local developer will ensure its constant availability.
- Discuss with your team
Be sure to discuss all aspects of your mobile application and plan everything to the smallest detail before starting to create a mobile application. Try weeding out all additional or unnecessary functions – some of them may be added in future updates. Make sure that the very first version of your application is clean, cluttered and easy enough for user navigation.
Once the application is created, the next step will be to thoroughly test it for errors and other problems. Release the application only if you are completely satisfied with the experience.
More advice here.
- Creation of a mobile website
If you are not yet ready to develop a mobile application for your business, you should think about the next best thing – creating a mobile website to demonstrate your products and services. This website should ideally be compatible for viewing on various mobile devices.
Your internal team is likely to be competent enough to create a mobile version of your site. Make a plan of the features you want to include in your mobile website and discuss aspects related to graphics and user interface with your graphic designers and lead developers. Once you have the whole plan in place, you could also go ahead and outsource the developer or development team to create a mobile application for you. This is a more profitable way to create a mobile platform.
5. Innovative race
Trying to make themselves known in the mobile application industry, many companies launch applications based on advanced technologies such as voice recognition, AR, VR and so on. However, when deployed in the real world, such applications often do not justify their bold promises.
First of all: prototyping and testing are not enough to make such applications user-friendly. For example, if you run a voice-enabled application, you need to provide for all possible interactions. This means not only that your application must perfectly handle natural language, but also solve potential non-standard usability problems, such as those arising in various voice activation scenarios.
The application should not start by talking nearby or when the device is in your pocket; it should interact well with the headset; and it should not be completely deaf in a noisy environment. Moreover, either with technology or with the help of special instructions for the user, you need to think about how the application should cope with additional problems, for example, when users speak different languages with the application or when they have speech disorders.
In conclusion
You will have to do a little research to hire the right application developer or team. You can set your business contacts or visit the forums online and publish your request. After selecting the developer, follow the above steps to make sure that the application development process goes smoothly and without problems.