It has become a competitive compulsion for small businesses and startups to build their own branded apps. But most small business app projects simply feel overpowered by the huge cost of app development. Obviously, building a mobile app is more expensive than building a website. But considering the huge advantages an app promises, app development is likely to remain popular for years to come.
Are you concerned about the cost factors when planning to create an app from scratch for your small business? Do you still believe in the myth that app development is something reserved for big brands? In that case, you must have a look at the huge number of successful small business and startup apps across all niches.
If you are inquiring about how to make an app from scratch within your own budget, here we are going to provide the most important money-saving tips that small business apps can consider.
Provide a Simple and Relevant App Solution
There can be hardly any doubt about the fact that every app comes as a solution to one or more than one real-life problem faced by the target users of that app. So, your app, however small a business it represents, must be offering a solution to any of the customer problems. Now you need to ensure providing a simple and effective solution to the customer problem.
Simplicity ensures that you can avoid unnecessary features and UI/UX attributes and corresponding development efforts and resources resulting in a lesser cost of development. On the other hand, a simple app focusing on a single feature can help you make the cost assessment easily and finish the project earlier, requiring less development time and resources.
Build Cross-Platform Apps
Do you consider building an app for one mobile OS platform at a time just to avoid the higher development cost of targeting two OS platforms simultaneously? Well, even if you are building an iOS app now, in the future you must be needing an Android version simply because you cannot keep half of the smartphone user audience out of consideration. So, building two native apps even with a considerable time gap will be equally expensive.
This is where cross-platform development targeting both iOS and Android platforms can be greatly cost-saving. To dispel the misunderstanding let us clearly assure you that cross-platform apps are not hybrid apps and hence they do not come with the performance or usability shortcomings that hybrid apps are known for. Hybrid apps are developed once and run across all platforms, while cross-platform apps are built with reusable code for multiple platforms and ensure delivering platform-specific user interface design.
Build an MVP App Project
A minimum viable product (MVP) app is the minimized version of an app with basic and elementary features that is rolled out for the purpose of validating the app concept. Such an app is rolled out to gather user feedback and accordingly incorporate relevant changes to the app project through subsequent updates.
MVP helps slash the cost of development. Since app developers can build a very basic app involving only key features, the initial cost of development will be much lower. The subsequent updates requiring incremental changes and value addition will further lower the cost of development.
On top of that, the MVP app allows gathering user feedback and subjecting the app to market testing for validation. This ensures zero course corrections for the app project resulting in optimum resource utilization and increased control on development costs. Moreover, MVP with its focus on minimalist development ensures a faster pace of development resulting in fewer development hours and corresponding cost advantage.
Outsourcing the Development Team
Outsourcing an app project to the most cost-competitive development services is a key way to exercise better cost control without compromising on quality. Since hiring an in-house development team involves long-term overhead costs and a rigorous hiring process, many businesses prefer hiring the most accomplished remote development companies for their app projects.
By outsourcing development, you can easily get access to a full stack of experts and specialists with years of experience. You can get industry-best talents onboard with minimum overhead cost. Moreover, since these companies already have well-established development processes, you can expect to get the app delivered in less time resulting in further lowering of development cost. You can always compare the development companies and their cost overhead and accordingly can hire for your projects.
DIY Development Tools
Finally, to reduce the development cost of an app project, you can embrace the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) development tools requiring the least development efforts. Most of the leading DIY tools allow you to build apps with simple drag and drop functions by using ready-to-use templates at the least cost and time.
Of course, these ready-to-use development tools irrespective of their ease of use, faster development time, and cost advantages, lack the scope of customization and sophistication. If you are going to develop a feature-rich as well as complicated app with multiple layers, it is better to opt for custom development instead of DIY tools.
Conclusion
As a small business, you have now an array of options to build an app with less development cost while not compromising with the app user experience and features. Irrespective of how you lower the cost of development, it is important to remain flexible for the cost of building key features and the UI/UX elements. Remember, an app has taken shape over the years involving continuous value additions. So, it’s better to start small and simple and a development roadmap over time.