Excellent Tips to Reduce App Development Cost: Develop The Best App In Your Budget

Creating a mobile app for your company is perhaps the most worthwhile measure you can take to boost sales and thus make more money. But, developing an app is an expensive process, and if you do not follow some guidelines while endeavoring to create the app, you can end up paying an excessively high price for it.

Optimization is required for any business venture, and app development is not excluded from the list. To develop an app that is both useful for your company, as well as economically viable requires that you put some thought behind and before developing the app. To make things easier for you, we have come up with some strategies which, when followed, will help to reduce the app development cost without compromising on the quality of the end product.

It’s essential that you are ready with a plan on going through the project of app development. If you are not, then you may end up overpaying or performing tasks that are irrelevant and fruitless. Thus, it’s a good idea to plan ahead.

This article will help you out with the necessary guidelines and insight on developing an app with reduce app development cost without sacrificing the standard of the app.

1.Plan Your Requirements

The first and perhaps the most essential step you can take at the beginning of your app development project is to have a detailed documentation of your requirements. Make sure to have a blueprint of your project ready beforehand. Talk with your team, thrash out the different ideas, and be ready with the one which you think will best cater to the requirements of your company. Having a clear picture of the end product is as essential as the process of developing the app. Not only the final product, but you also need to have a step-by-step documentation of the entire process of app development, so that none of the details are overlooked, and the process is thorough and consistent.

This initial step can reduce app development cost to a great extent, because, without a proper scheme of action, your app development team will be at a haze as to what exactly the requirements of your company are, and that way, it will cause unnecessary delays and may also increase the cost.

Experienced resources and business analysts can help you decide what is needed in the app, and what can be left out in the end product. Though changes and errors are inevitable in the process, with a clear picture of the final product available, these will be kept to a minimum.

2.MVP- Minumum Viable Product

It’s a good idea to launch the initial version of your app with the minimum set of features and functionality available. A simple implementation of the core idea should be enough to test market demands, and how your app is doing initially. It’s really a waste of time and resources to launch a fully featured app with all the functionalities that you can think of, in its initial stages. Rather, it would be a nice plan to launch it with the bare essentials, test it in the market, have feedback, and add to its features later on. If your app doesn’t do well, as there’s always a possibility of that happening, there’s room for changes and alterations in its features and overall functionality, and with an MVP (minimum viable product) launched initially, making these changes would be easier, and will also reduce app development cost by a formidable amount.

You can always add the functionalities one-by-one over time, and see how each of them performs. With MVP, there would be enough room for addition and if required, subtraction of a feature from the existing app. You can divide your app development plan into a long-term iterative process, and that way, you will not only save on cost but also win on the quality and performance of the app.

3.Outsourcing

You can also reduce app development cost if you consider outsourcing your project to offshore and nearshore software development firms. Outsourcing is helpful in reducing the costs, as in many countries, the hourly work rates are lower than yours. Thus, you can choose a reputed firm from a different country, with skilled and experienced developers, and the development cost will be much lesser, without compromising on the quality of your app.

4.Cross-Platform Development

If you want to develop an app, the most important deciding factor for its costs is the platform you choose for it. The most important ones available are Android, iOS, and Windows. Considering that each one has its own UI, you can either hire different teams to develop your app for each one of them, or you can opt for an app that works in all of them. The second option is known as cross-platform development and is both easier to develop, as it uses a single code which will work across multiple platforms and at the same time, it is cost-effective, as you do not have to hire different teams and spend extra on resources.

But, you need to keep in mind, that cross-platform development is only possible if your app is not much complex, and does not use hardware integration. Enquire from your developers whether the cross-platform development would affect the quality of the app across the different platforms and if the performance of your app doesn’t vary much across them, then you can consider going for it.

5.Use Pre-Built Solutions

It can be an expensive task to build a template from scratch. Instead, you can make use of pre-built templates that only require slight modification for customizing it to fit your purpose. There are also various third-party solution providers who can come in handy if you are looking for ready-to-use solutions for a nominal cost. You just need to choose a framework that would fit your requirements, and make modifications with it. Choosing readymade templates for your app is an intelligent approach and if deployed correctly, it would help reduce app development cost to a great extent.

The only drawback in this approach is that it can make the apps unstable or erroneous. But, you can consult an experienced development team so that they can figure out to which extent these templates can be and should be used so that your end product is error free, at the same time is not costing you an extravagant amount.

6.Supervision

You cannot put all your faith in your project managers and expect that they will handle any discrepancies with the project effectively. They can also make mistakes, and you need to constantly supervise in order to point an error and remove it. The earlier an error is identified, the easier it becomes to address it, and thus, the app development process becomes smoother and effective. It also reduces app development cost, as detecting an error and correcting it costs less in the earlier stages than if they are detected later.

7.Conclusion

App development is a process that generally requires a lot of time, patience, skill, and money. Though the three primary factors i.e., time, patience, and skill would be required to a full extent, you can easily cut down the cost of development by following the guidelines provided above. It’s very much possible to develop an app that meets your requirements, is error-free and fully functional, all with a reduced cost. All you need to do is follow our tips, and you should be able to reduce app development cost to a great extent.