Whether you order food online, book a cab or engage in online chat with your friends, you are always relying on various mobile applications. Mobile apps have become an integral part of every person’s life today. In fact, many studies have shown that mobile apps help people get their work done faster than ever before.
According to a recent study, 197 billion is the number of times mobile applications have been downloaded in 2017. In the coming years, it is predicted that the number of downloads will be thrice of this number. This number of downloads is not much of a surprise when it is compared to the use of tablets or smartphones in the daily life of every person. People have indulged into smartphones due to a myriad of reasons.
Only websites or social media platforms are no longer the stages for brand promotion or sales generation. Having a customized mobile application will help you boost your sales. You might still stay on your websites to gain traffic and the conversions but to fulfill your business goals; you have to get the customized iOS application and Android applications. A mobile application can be built without much hassle.
Why Does Your Business Need Mobile Application?
You might have come across a lot of benefits of having a mobile application for your business, but here some of the benefits that are known to very few people:
Mobile Applications Increase Your Brand Value
Having an application is the perfect way to embrace the mobile users because it increases the value of the business in front of its customers. The access to these applications helps your customers in many ways. With mobile applications, you can offer:
- Exclusive discounts and promotions
- Information about your products and services with interactive demos
- Easy customer support and feedback
- Secure and fast payments for your products and services
Hence, mobile applications help strengthening customer relationships and loyalty.
Mobile Applications Increase the Customer Engagement
Having a brand value in the eyes of your customers is one of the important things but the most significant thing is having your customers engaged with your brand. Mobile application helps you to connect and engage with the customers in real-time, developing a good relationship, and guiding them in every way.
- Mobile app is the most effective sales channel today
- Mobile app increases the recognition of your brand
- Mobile app offers invaluable customer insights
- Mobile app increases the time customer spends on your products and services
Mobile App Development Cost Factors
There are various factors which affect mobile app development cost. Here we are focusing only on the key factors.
- Exclusive discounts and promotions
- Information about your products and services with interactive demos
- Easy customer support and feedback
- Secure and fast payments for your products and services
Business Type
Before you start estimating the price of your business application, you should ask yourself a few questions: Before you start estimating the price of your business application, you should ask yourself a few questions:
- Do you need to define how will your application be used?
- How will the mobile application bring added value to your existing business?
- Will the app be involving the factors of generating new revenues?
Analyzing the different needs will help you to develop the type of application you want. These factors will help you to develop a cost-effective mobile application which meets your business requirements.
App Type
The type of application you develop will have a great impact on the overall pricing of your app development.
Web App: For small businesses, instead of going with a complete mobile app, you can build a mobile-friendly website that provides a smooth user experience across a variety of screen sizes of different smartphones. This is the most affordable option out of all.
Native App: An app is native when it is built with a native programming language of the operating system like iOS or Android OS. The main advantage of developing native application is the better performance and user experience it endows. However, if you want to develop an app that can work on multiple platforms then the app needs to be programmed separately on each operating system leading to a higher time and cost of app development.
Hybrid App: When you are looking for a small or medium low-cost mobile app development, then a hybrid app development is a healthy compromise that you can make. Why they are called Hybrid Apps is because the application is written in one programming language and can be operated on multiple platforms. This type of applications is famous because their development and maintenance costs are lower compared to native apps.
Development Model
Another important factor affecting the mobile app development cost is the project development or engagement model. There are 2 types of development models most commonly used in any app development projects.
Onshore App Development: In this model, the customer assigns app development projects to local developers or development companies. With this model, there will be no communication gap between the parties and face to face meetings can be arranged to discuss the most essential parts associated with the project. Moreover, there will be no time difference as it is seen in most of the offshore models. This makes project execution smoother.
Offshore App Development: In offshore app development model, the development projects are outsourced to countries like India, Ukraine and the Philippines where the development costs are comparatively lower and technical skills are easily available. Due to the lower lab our costs, offshore app development in India is the best way to keep the development costs down and still get equal quality product by doing a proper project management.
How much money will it cost me to develop a mobile app?
There are no ready calculators to calculate a mobile app development cost. However, you should consider following parameters while budgeting your app development projects.
Platform: Depending upon the platforms ( iOS, Android, Windows ) which you want to provide support for in your mobile apps, the development cost varies. Also, the cost involved in publishing the apps to appstores are also to be factored in.
Complexity and Features: The more complex the application becomes, the costlier it will get for you because then multiple things will come into picture leading to the high-cost. Also, the cost very much depends on the features & functionalities you want in your mobile app.
Readymade v/s Custom App Development: Depending upon your app requirements, you can go with either readymade off-the-shelf apps with little customization or develop a tailor-made app as per your requirements. Readymade apps will be cost-effective initially but in a longer run custom apps will earn you more ROI.
Conclusion
As we know by now that the mobile app development cost depends on various business and technical factors, there is no thumb rule to calculate the price. However, the pricing could range between $1,000 to $20,000 depending upon the application scope, functionalities and platform support required. It is advisable to define a clear scope and roadmap of application the beginning of the project in order to get a fair idea about Mobile app development price
Get a free app development cost analysis for your next mobile application development project from us by writing an email on business@techcronus.com with your requirements.