What to know before you start building a mobile app

Every year, people download more than 200 billion apps onto their smartphones, and that number will only get bigger. Smartphones are a crucial part of how everybody gets through their day. We use them to choose a restaurant, get directions, stay connected with friends and family, or even to get important work done from home.

Help your employees stay more connected, engaged, and efficient with custom-built mobile apps. They’ll use these apps to replace and streamline complex manual processes with workflow automation and other digital alternatives, modernise and transform how work gets done, and generate and share business insights in real time, so that next great innovation won’t have to languish on somebody’s laptop.

And now that almost anyone in your business can easily create their own low-code mobile apps, there’s never been a better time to begin.

Create a comprehensive plan

Before you start building mobile apps for your business, have clear objectives in mind. Identify the opportunities you want to capture and the problems you need to solve. Know which inefficiencies you’ll use the app to help eliminate. Consider the people who will use the app and their specific needs. Remote workers or field staff likely have different requirements than office-based employees. Engineers might want more technical tools than marketing writers would use.

By the time you’ve established what and who the app is for, you’re almost ready to get started. But first, you’ll need to develop training, support processes, and documentation that will help users make their experiences more successful. Finally, don’t forget about engagement. Develop a plan to spread the word about how your mobile app will help make employees’ lives easier.

Drive mobile app adoption with the right user support

Employees are always more likely to use apps that are easy and intuitive, and the right level of user support will help build credibility for your mobile app and encourage wider adoption.

Establish regular update cycles and use them to address feedback, enhance the user experience, and refine the app with analytics-driven insights.

With a clear, comprehensive plan in place, it’s time to choose the development tools that will help you bring your vision to life.

Turn ideas into value with mobile apps

You can turn great ideas into real business value by building custom applications that meet your individual business needs. With apps development platforms that make it easy to design enterprise-grade mobile apps without previous coding experience, employees at any level of your organisation can quickly transform opportunities into highly effective applications—at minimal cost—so there’s less time between the spark of innovation and real business impact.

Development engineers, IT specialists, and ordinary business users can all create apps with the right mobile app development tools. Using an array of visual tools and templates, apps development software simplifies app creation and even makes it easy to add powerful components like AI and advanced data analytics.

With mobile apps development services, you can put people in charge of the apps they create. Citizen developers on the frontlines of your business can build their own tools to meet the challenges and opportunities that they know best—without having to rely on business leadership and professional developers.

Build two types of mobile apps

Most commercially available mobile app development platforms support two main types of applications:

• Canvas apps provide an intuitive, user-friendly interface that lets employees build apps as if they were creating a digital slide presentation. Starting with a blank canvas, users can create apps with customised user interfaces and a specific look and feel. This type of app gives builders a high level of control over every aspect of the design and layout.
• Model-driven apps lead with data and help users quickly add information to a prebuilt layout. This type of app is ideal for helping employees work through complex business processes or visualise data.

Choose the right apps development platform

To build the right mobile applications for your business, you need the right mobile apps development platform. Some are more complex, some more powerful, some more expensive, and some better for some types of apps than others.

Choose one that fits your needs. Here are some ways to help find the right one.

Look for the right capabilities

We recommend a mobile apps development platform that’s designed to help users with little or no coding experience create dynamic, professional-grade apps that are tailored to their unique business needs. Look for solutions that incorporate prebuilt templates and drag-and-drop components for an intuitive app building experience. Choose a technology that includes connectors to help users connect apps to data sources.

Ask the right questions when selecting an app development platform

Most apps development platforms include many options, but you should consider these criteria when selecting the right solution for your business:

• The platform that will run the application. Whether you use Microsoft Azure or another solution, it’s important to choose apps development tools that will help you create apps that run well on the platform you’ll ultimately use.
• Ease of use. The solution should democratize app building and be intuitive to use. As you evaluate options, reflect on the capabilities that your employees will find useful.
• Scalability of the apps. Will the software allow you to create versatile apps that can grow with your business?
• Pricing. This is an important factor in choosing mobile app development software that best suits your business. However, it’s important to remember that apps development platforms can reduce costs overall when compared to the price of outsourcing apps development.