Building an application to do so is a great option and something that can make you stand out if you do it right. If it’s done wrong, it can cause exactly the opposite to happen.
Apps are something that customers look for and can offer you the ability to market your company, sell your products and services, and keep your customers in the know about important news.
Outline
- Why Choose IT Consultants for App Building
- Consultants Can Help You Create the Right App
- Budgeting for Your Application
- Considering App Platform
- How IT Consultants Can Help
Things to Think About When Building an App with an IT Consultant
As someone who runs a business, you likely already know how important it is to market yourself both online and offline. Building an application to do so is a great option and something that can make you stand out if you do it right. If it’s done wrong, it can cause exactly the opposite to happen.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t build an app, because the reality is that you should. Apps are something that customers look for and can offer you the ability to market your company, sell your products and services, and keep your customers in the know about important news. However, it’s important to make an app that is innovative, interesting, and relevant to your business.
Why Choose IT Consultants for App Building
When building an app, the first thing you need to decide is how it will be developed. One option is to learn the ins and outs of mobile app development on your own. However, this can be a long process with lots of complications. If you don’t know how to write code, you’ll need to do that before anything else. You can do this, but it takes a lot of time and may cause your application to come out much later than you would like.
Hiring an IT consultant is another option that can minimize your need to learn a totally new skill set. Once you take a look around, you will find there are many price ranges and options available to you. This can be overwhelming, but it also means you can ensure that you stay on budget and find someone who is capable of exactly what you want your app to be.
Consultants Can Help You Create the Right App
Apps range from simple to highly innovative and what works for one business may not be quite right for the next. What you want is different from the business down the street, which is also different from an app for a business in another industry. Putting it all together can be tough for someone new to apps, but an IT consultant can help you determine what is the right choice for you.
Before speaking with an IT consultant, there are a few questions you should be able to answer first:
- What is my maximum budget for creating a company application?
- What do I want the primary function of the application to be?
- How involved do I want the user experience to be?
Once you have answers to those questions, a developer can help with everything else you need. You need to have an idea of the direction you want for your app as well as what your budget it. Keep in mind that many companies who develop apps like your own will need to go through a discovery or research phase before the actual building begins to take place. Part of your budget will need to be going to this in order to get onto the same page as your IT consultant. Finally, consider how complex of an app you want.
Budgeting for Your Application
The more intensive the app is, the most it will cost to develop it. Making an app that acts as a simple calculator is easier than creating an app like Grubhub, for instance. Some of the things you will want to budget for when creating an app include the following:
- Server Hosting
- Legal Fees
- Overhead
- Subscription Fees for Third Party Services
You should always build a bit of excess money into your budget in case of unexpected expenses. Nobody wants to run out of money due to forgetting to mention something to a consultant. This can lead to never finishing the app or releasing an app that does not have all the functionality that you desire.
Considering App Platform
After you’ve made it to this point, you want to think about which platform the app will launch on. You can focus on iOS and use the Apple App Store, target Android users on the Google Play Store, or you can choose to do both. What you decide will have an effect on the costs you pay to an IT consultant.
As far as cost goes, Android apps tend to cost more to develop than iOS apps, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore Google Play. Deciding the right option involves looking at your marketing strategy and target audience.
Another thing to consider is a hybrid app, rather than a native one. Native apps feature a native UI that users can easily understand, are easy to find in app stores, and provide access to device software and hardware. They tend to offer the best user experience.
Hybrid apps can be used on multiple platforms, access software and hardware through plug-ins, and have cheaper origination costs. These apps can often be done and marketed more quickly.
How IT Consultants Can Help
Still not sure why an IT consultant is needed for your new app? We have a list of reasons below:
- These companies can help you decide on the right strategies, trends, methods, and code to get the results you are hoping for.
- IT consultants can do the research with teams of specialists who are aware of the need to apply the right tools for design, UI, navigation, coding, integration, and more.
- Consultants are able to suggest the best methods to use for every aspect of the app through the entire development process.
- These people can utilize search tabs, table/grid, indexing, and other things that work well with your specific business application.
- Able to decide on the best strategy for buttons, functions, alerts, features, notifications, and more to best fit with your business app.
Conclusion
Having a great IT consultant on your side will ensure your business app is the best it can possibly be. You can save time learning new skills and pass off the work to someone who is skilled and knowledgeable about the subject already. Sure, it costs money, but you can make that up by having an app your customers love and use on a regular basis.
About the Author:
Igor Zapletnev, I am a CEO at Exyte[.]com, an IT consulting firm that I started when I was 22 after getting a Master's Degree in Computer Science. I started with working on an IDE for cross-platform mobile development and steadily expanded Exyte up to four departments, including mobile development for both iOS and Android, as well as smart-contract and blockchain development. Exyte also launched two VR multiplayer games, developed the best SVG library in Swift, and managed to get together people I actually happy to see others every day. Read more about us here.