4 Things To Consider Before Developing An App For Your Business
Apps make it easier than ever to conduct business on mobile and handheld devices, and in an age of online ordering and content streaming, apps can really compliment the user experience. It goes without saying that apps can certainly add to your business’s competitive advantage, but simply adding an app for your business doesn’t mean you’ll get that advantage or achieve your ROI goals. App development does come with high costs both to get the first version up and running, and for ongoing maintenance and bug fixing. Consider four things you should account for before proceeding with app development.
Researching The Concept
Before you start putting the pieces together for your new app, you want to make sure its user interface is going to be unique. What you do need to be careful of is not overloading the app with too many fancy graphics or videos, but also not leaving it too thin and with too few options. Too much content can make the app very large and cause long download and install times for users as well as potential crashes and headaches. But apps that don’t have enough content can put businesses behind their competitors due to customer disappointment. You need to look for that sweet spot of what you can offer that your competitors don’t, yet keep the content slimmed down enough to prevent slow loading and crashes.
Researching Customer Input
Ideas and concepts put into app content and graphics can be great, but how useful all of that is still depends on your customers’ input. You should be asking them what your app could do for them that isn’t being done already, and what kind of ongoing improvements they want done. There are ways to do this through email marketing, online reviews at the app store, and social media listening. Your app needs to be something they would tell their friends about and encourage others to use.
Researching Development Framework
Putting your app together can be the most challenging step when you have a large development team and different programmers working on different aspects of it. That’s where an app framework suite is important to give you and your developers a unified structure from which to work. This kind of suite tends to keep everyone in the loop and reduce redundancies as the app is being compiled. Think of the app’s Javascript frameworks as a sort of virtual assembly line.
Researching Security Protocols
In order to build and maintain the trust of your customers, you need to make sure their data is kept as secure as possible. That means taking as many measures to harden your app and minimize the risks of hackers being able to penetrate it. You may mistakenly assume if your business is a small business or not one that deals in large transactions that attackers are not interested in attacking your app. But you would be wrong. You need to secure any databases your app accesses, and use strong encryption mechanisms especially when your customers are ordering items through your app. Attacks are always evolving, so it’s important to stay up to date on new vulnerabilities in coding and data protection.
The bottom line is developing an app is essential for connecting with customers who use devices of all sizes and operating systems, and it really needs to compliment your website in terms of content and SEO marketing. But once the work on your app has begun, you need to commit to always improving and updating it to make sure your customers are getting a top-notch experience and staying safe while they do.
