Developing An App For Your Business
Posted on 30. Dec, 2011 by editor in Business Advice
Businesses are increasingly realising the importance of apps as a business tool. Pete Whelan of application development company Infonote explores the growth of applications and has some tips for their development.
The way that companies are communicating with customers, doing business and marketing themselves has been undergoing a major change over the past couple of years. The reason for this is largely due to advances in technology – namely the advent of social media and the increasing growth of the smartphone market. In fact, the growth of the latter has been nothing short of phenomenal with government regulatory body Ofcom estimating that over a quarter of UK adults now own a smartphone – and within 3 years more than 50% of mobile phones are expected to be Smartphones. This rapid rise is due partly to the increasing affordability of handsets, as well as the reduced prices of calls and data.
Not only has the expansion of the smartphone market introduced a new degree of flexibility and mobility into business, but it has also been instrumental in the rapid development and expansion of applications (apps). Essentially a small piece of software of designed specifically for use with smartphones, the popularity of the app has now expanded into the tablet sector with applications now regularly being developed for both tablets and smartphones.
Evolving into a Business Tool
Initially seen as more of a youth fad than a legitimate business tool, some in the commercial community are yet to be convinced of the importance of using apps as part of their marketing and business strategy, and those that are may still be unsure how best to go about developing one for their organisation. However, just as laptops have become an integral part of daily working life and websites have become a key part of a company’s marketing mix, so apps are predicted to facilitate ever more mobile working practices. Furthermore, apps have a significant role to play in communicating with potential clients, increasing customer awareness, enhancing brand identity and improving sales.
A Crowded Market
There is a quite mind boggling array of applications on the market: an estimated 400,000 plus, with apps that tell you what to wear, help plan a holiday, give weather reports, tell you train times – the list goes on. More business orientated apps enable you to update your social media, give GPS directions to your premises, enable people to call direct from within the app, manage documents, list events and promotions, provide information on products and services, integrate with You Tube, Twitter et al, and push notification messages direct to users’ phones. It’s also important to be aware that some apps are free to download, whilst others cost money – an average price of around £2.99 per app. Some apps are also known as ‘freemium’ meaning that they are free to download initially, but then cost money to upgrade or use regularly.
Apps are also likely to play an important part in the increasing occurrence of mobile payments, predicted to be the way forward in retail. National coffee chain Starbucks is launching what it claims be the first iPhone payments app for the UK high street in January and is also developing an Android version of the app to be launched later in 2012. Similarly, payments processor Creditcall launched an app based mobile payments service at the end of 2011 which enables small businesses to accept credit and debit card payments on a BlackBerry or Android device.
Driven by your Business Needs
When deciding to develop your own app, you should first consider your primary business needs; for example, do you want to develop an app specifically to support your employees during the course of their busy work schedules? If so, this ad- hoc deployment is possible without the need for the app to be published and available in the various app stores or market places. You should also bear in mind compatibility with tablets, such as the iPad. These devices are in super growth and so it might be logical to develop an app that can work on both device types. If so, this needs to be determined at the start of the development process.
Infonote’s Ten Tips for Developing a Business App
1. Identify your main need or opportunity and decide what you want your app to do. Think about your target audience and how this might appeal to them. Do your competitors have an app? If so, take a look and identify what they offer that you could do better. Do you need it to be fully compatible with a tablet to maximise the larger real estate?
2. Find a developer, such as Infonote, with experience developing in the native device code (this is the specific code or language for each device) and deploying to the various app stores. Remember that your brand is in their hands, so you are looking to develop a high quality application that reflects well upon your business.
3. Think long term by asking your developer about support and ongoing maintenance of your app once it is up and running. You need to be sure that any developer you use will be around to meet your future needs.
4. Once you have done your groundwork and thought through what you want your app to do, you need to agree a specification and be thorough. This document is the point of reference which dives the process – it is what will ultimately be developed so it’s crucial to get this right.
5. You need to have a budget in mind before you start, so agree a fixed price or get a guideline price before any development begins. If cost is an issue, the best advice is to keep it simple. Cost is largely determined by the time or number of days the development takes to complete and deploy.
6. Devise an app strategy which preferably follows your business cycle or any seasonal activity. It should complement your marketing plan and link to your sales and promotional activity.
7. Keep the app content fresh and current. Make promotions a regular and changing feature to encourage people to revisit. A large proportion of apps are deleted as a result of poor content or no updates. Remember the competition for space on devices is high, and this will only get tougher as the market grows.
8. Keep it simple. Avoid gimmicks: they take up valuable data space and directly affect the performance of the app – plus they cost money to develop.
9. Publish your app for free, it makes the download decision for clients and customers an easy one. Only charge for an app if the content is effectively your business idea. NB. Each of the platforms take a percentage of the selling price, for example Apple take 30% of each sale.
10. Promote your app as you would any product or service. Don’t forget to use social media and to promote it on your website. Tell your clients and customers about your app and its key benefits – if they don’t know it exists they can’t use it.
Pretty much all businesses – irrespective of size or the industry that they operate in – can benefit from developing a good quality app. With 297million smartphones sold worldwide last year, the appeal and use of apps will only increase, so decide how they can benefit your business, get some advice from the experts and take the first step.
Pete Whelan (pictured) is Managing Director of Infonote, a Leicestershire-based software company who develop bespoke solutions for companies across a range of industries. Infonote also develop applications for a number of mobile devices including the iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows 7 phone. For further information please see www.infonote.com
