Have you considered developing an app for your business but keep putting it off? The world has gone ‘apptastic’ and you want a piece of the action, but you’re not quite sure how to go about it or if you can afford it. The fear of any investment often comes from a lack of understanding about its benefits. At Code Galaxy, we know that an app is a sound investment for business growth, but that’s easy for us to say! We appreciate that our customers need to understand the costs, and how much return they can expect from parting with their hard-earned cash before they’re prepared to take the plunge. In this article, we’ll explain more about the benefits of a business app and, while we can’t come up with specific figures because each app is bespoke, we will also clarify where the costs for development are incurred.
The benefits of having a business app
When considering the advantages of an app, you should consider the benefits it provides to your customers first.
The primary benefit of an app for your customers is convenience. According to data from Statista.com, the smartphone penetration rate in the UK reached 93% by September 2022, with 82% of over 55s now owning a smartphone. This means the convenience factor of an app is relevant to a larger target market than you may think.
Benefits for your business include improved customer engagement, increased brand awareness, upselling through push notifications and customer loyalty. These benefits knock your non-app competitors out of the park.
What are the costs of developing an app?
As mentioned above, each app is customised to the needs of the business. The more functionality you require, the more expensive the app will be due to the amount of development time that is needed to achieve your goals.
Two time-consuming stages in app development are:
• Discovery and research
App developers need to get to know your business model, your customers and what you want to achieve. From there, they conduct research on similar businesses and apps to determine what is out there, who your competitors are and what functionality you need.
• User design, testing and implementation
Going back to what we said earlier about customer benefits being a primary consideration, UX and UI (user experience and user interface) design, testing and implementation are time-consuming aspects of app development.
Together, the discovery and design elements of app development can represent up to around 30% of your cost.
• Complexity of your app
If your app has several pages and is to be connected to other applications, both internal and external, this will increase the cost of developing your app. Likewise, the more code that is required for the programme will increase the cost, as will the requirement for personalised push notifications, GPS, and augmented reality (AR – digital visual elements).
Different industries, businesses and requirements need varying amounts of time to code and develop an app to get it to the point where it is ready to go live.
• App maintenance
Once the app is live, it will need to be maintained. The cost of maintaining your app will depend on developer time, how much support you need and how complex the app is.
Choose Code Galaxy to develop and maintain your app
Code Galaxy is a software and web developer based in Lancashire. We develop apps for clients from a variety of sectors. Get in touch to find out how we can help you increase brand awareness and customer engagement.
