I was recently in Nottingham speaking at the Mobile Marketers Conference 2012 on why we should bother about mobile at all. Why does mobile matter? Read more →
In my role running an app agency I am frequently asked the same two questions by prospective clients.
- How much does it cost to build an app?
- How long does it take to build an app?
My answer is, more often than not, enough to scare off the prospective new client and they are never heard of again.
Apps are not websites!
Many such clients have had experience in running or commissioning web projects. This background tends to create a false expectation of both cost and timescales of an app project. Apps are fundamentally different to websites as they are real software. They are fundamentally more complex and require a more specialist skill set to design and build them. We have reached the stage with web technology that everybody has a brother, or an uncle, or a neighbour, or somebody that they know can knock them out a website in a few weeks for a couple of hundred pounds. Granted, a professional web agency will give you a better experience and an all round better end result for considerably more time and money but the cheap and cheerful option is available. This is not really the case when it comes to apps.
- How much does it cost to build an app?
Between £7.5k and £50k+ ;This is a typical custom developed app for your shop, sports club, school, college, news portal, music festival, organisation or whatever. This is the price for one platform. If you want you app to work on multiple platforms (windows, iOS, Android) then you need to multiply up the cost accordingly. The grand total will depend, obviously, on the complexity of the app and what other systems you might want to integrate with. - How long does it take to build my app?
2 – 6 months ;1 – 3 weeks to develop the initial wireframes
2 – 4 weeks to complete the design
1 – 4 months to develop the beta version of your app
1 – 2 months to test and make it bug free.
You have been warned
Be vary wary of freelancers who promise an app for a couple of thousand pounds in a few weeks. There are a large number of freelancers out there who are biting off more than they can chew and you may end up paying a lot more than you bargained for over a much longer period of time. If you get anything delivered at all.
Consider yourself warned. *smile*
This was originally posted on in-tracton.com. Join in the conversation here.
My mobile phone is an extension of me. Everything I do in my day to day life is through my phone in some form. It holds my photos, my music, my videos, my calendar, my email. I interact with my social networks through it, I answer life’s little questions with it. I kill time with it and I catch up with distant friends with it. I even make the occasional call. It’s always on my person, never out of reach. And I’m sorry to have to admit that it’s the last thing I see at night and the first thing I see in morning. But I’m guessing I’m not alone.
This time it’s personal
You must have had that sinking feeling when somebody, for whatever reason, asks to have a look at your phone. Or even worse, use it to “check something”. You know that you have to allow this. You have to pass your shiny device into the hands of another. There is no socially acceptable way to not. But as you do, you know that a little piece of you is now at the mercy of an outsider. They have access to your world!
Because of the amount of time we spend with our smart devices, and the things that we use them for, we form an emotional connection with them. We are protective of them and do not tolerate lightly anything that may interfere with the normal running of them.
When our tools don’t work, we tend to blame ourselves, for being too stupid or not reading the manual or having too-fat fingers …. When our tools are broken, we feel broken. And when somebody fixes one, we feel a tiny bit more whole. -Steve Jobs
This is why your organisation must consider mobile when developing an online strategy. We are using mobile devices to access services and interact online with increasing regularity. Very soon (some estimates place it at 2014) there will be more people interacting online via a mobile device than via a traditional desktop / laptop. Our online behaviour is changing and this time it’s personal.
If I attempt to use your services or access your content and it doesn’t play nicely with my smartphone it is quite possible that I will not only find it frustrating, but I will offended by it. How dare you break my shiny device? This may sound a little strong but the emotional connection that I have formed with my device, that is an extension of myself, could lead me to place a black mark against your organisation if you didn’t deem it worth your time to consider me when providing your services.
Blue screen of death
If you are developing apps then they need to not crash my phone, access or share my data without permission, or negatively impact my experience of using my device in any way. When software produced a “blue screen of death” on windows then, no matter what happen or why, it was the stupid computers fault. If your app “breaks” my phone, no matter how or why, it’s your fault!
If your website is unreadable or unusable on my touch screen device then it shows that you were not interested in me. Forcing me to use a traditional internet access method (if I still have access to one) means that I am not important to you. And fobbing me off with a poorly implemented mobile alternative site that leaves me thinking that I’m missing something and looking for the “show full site link” makes me feel like you just don’t care.
It’s been emotional
Mobile device use invokes an emotional reaction. This means that the damage that can be done to the image of your organisation is greatly increased. If you have not yet considered mobile in your online strategy then do so soon. Before you do any more damage.
This post was originally published on boagworld.com
I thought that it was about time that I practised what I preached and so Dootrix (my mobile development agency) has a brand new responsive website.
That is pretty much all there is to this story, other than, ooo, isn’t it shiny and resizable!
If you are in need of any mobile development work or just want to have a chat about your mobile strategy then hop on over and get in touch.
Dootrix have been working with the nice people at Simpl on their new website building app. The launch is not to far away now and they produced this little video to wet your apetite.
I’ll post more detail on what went into the project after it’s launch early next month.
Check out simpl.com for more information.
We are in an app bubble. Still. We have been since the launch of the iPhone 3G in 2008. This is something that I hear a lot in my role running an app development agency. Apps are a fad; the .com boom / gold rush of our time. Where will you be when the bubble bursts in a year or two? One day we will all grow up and go back to mobile sites. etc etc etc.
Well, it’s now 2012. We are approaching four years of life in said bubble. So is there any truth in it? I think that the answer is yes. And no. We are in something of bubble, but rather than it bursting what we are seeing is a maturing of peoples approach to it. Read more →
[box type="info"] This post was originally posted on in-traction.com. Head on over and join in the discussion.[/box]
This is the question, it seems, that Facebook have been wrestling with for some time. I think that we can all learn from the journey that they appear to have been on. I use the word appear because I have no connection with Facebook, I have no inside knowledge. This is just as the situation appears to me; looking in from the outside.
The Facebook u-turn
Back in November 2010 Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, said that there would be no iPad app for Facebook as the iPad was not mobile. Yesterday, finally, saw the launch of the Facebook iPad app. So what has changed? Read more →
We all know how important the mobile web has become, but what is the right approach? Should we build an iPhone app or mobile website? This factsheet explores your options.
[box type="info"] This post was originally posted on in-traction.com. Head on over and join in the discussion.[/box]
There has been quite a stir in recent weeks about Boston Globe. This American daily publication has shunned Apple and its in-app subscription model and decided instead to develop a new desktop browser based website which is optimised for mobile browsers using a techniques called adaptive and reactive design. We are going to take a brief look at what they did, why it works for them, and whether or not you should care. Read more →
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Following on from last weeks post from Kev about how the size of the device really does matter I have found myself considering how I actually use my devices. While I was aware that use of my laptop had changed since I started using an iPhone I was quite surprised to realised that my usage of my iPhone had radically changed since I started using an iPad.
