Mobile App Development
The article is a part of Code Inspiration’s software development outsourcing Knowledge Base.
Are you a young and ambitious product owner planning to start your business? Are you a business owner in need of moving forward your business digital?
For most of the businesses sooner or later it comes to a necessity to develop a mobile app. As the statistics shows popularity of mobile apps keeps growing. And even web is mostly viewed on mobile devices as well.
What should you think of before moving on with the mobile app development?
First of all, from the technical standpoint define if you need a big app with beautiful animations, lots of third party integrations, which would be used on multiple devices and different firmware.
If so – go native. Native software development, e.i. Swift for IOS and Kotlin/Java for Android can guarantee quality development, and bugs during massive usage. The main point is the price, which is higher in comparison with cross platforming mobile app development. However, if you are willing to hit the market you should keep in mind the product should be competitive and an attempt to economize on the quality might end up with a fail of the whole product.
When it makes sense to select a cross technology for mobile app development?
- When you need an MVP to show to your investors.
- When the mobile app itself is planned to be used on already defined devices, for company purposes, for example.
- If the mobile app itself is not a social one, and doesn’t require creative animated designs and will mostly consist of standard screens without any necessity in slight transitions, social feeds scrolling flawlessly and so on.
One more important question you should think of in advance is admin panel and back end. If back end technology can be selected by the development team, the scope of work for the admin panel can be defined by the product owner, because he will be the one to manage the project. Think and share that information in advance with the team or software developer you have selected.
Further, after technical aspects, think also about your main competitors and examples of mobile apps you would consider similar to what you need. Before moving on to do screen by screen description, study the market and select your colors.
When is it good time to send your requests and what to include to the cover letter to get relevant replies?
Share the idea about your mobile app and information about yourself and your company
- Share the approach about native and cross and your expectations
- Show examples of your competitors’ mobile apps
- Share your color palette expectations
Additionally, your request for mobile app development is expected to contain:
- In case you can list all the scope of the functionality in one single list – it is great.
- If you can create mock-ups of the screens on your own – nice start also!
If you are not willing to spend time doing specification guides and design mock-ups on your own, it is not a bad idea to leave it to professionals. As Apple and Google have their guides in accordance to which mobile apps should be designed, developed and published.
Usually, the so-called discovery phase is per charge. In your cover letter ask the software development company how much it will cost to develop a specification guide together with you. This document will help you to collect relevant quotes and select the right software development company to proceed with.
Always remember, software development is something about details. The more details you provide in the very beginning, the more efforts you spend on the preparatory stage – the more competitive product will come to the market and the more would be your chances to succeed with your mobile app.
The article is a part of Code Inspiration’s software development outsourcing Knowledge Base.
