What are you actually paying for your mobile apps?
Mobile applications can deliver significant value for your organisation, by offering better access to your products and services, delivering personalised and convenient interactions and improving brand loyalty.
But with mobile app development costs reaching new heights in recent years, do these benefits justify the cost of development? Or are your applications actually a hidden cost centre?
Not all applications are built equal. Costs can vary significantly with the complexity of the app, and often development work is focused on updating or adding to existing apps rather than building them from scratch. But, if you’re looking at a fresh build, research has shown that businesses pay an average of more than $171,000 for a custom application.
Both the benefits and the costs of developing apps have the potential to be sky high — so you need to make sure you’re striking the right balance and getting ROI.
Where hidden costs lie
The cost of your applications is going to vary depending on several factors, ranging from the type of app you’re creating to the features it requires. A social media app that incorporates features like messaging, images, video and text posts, for instance, will cost more to develop than something simpler, like a loyalty card app.
And whatever the basic app features, when you start adding advanced capabilities, such as payments, maps and live calls, your development costs will soar.
However much your app costs in total, you can largely predict how those costs will be broken down across each stage of development. You have to consider:
- Initial discovery and planning
- Design and prototyping
- Development and testing — which is where most of your money will be spent
- Deployment and launch
- Post-launch activities like updates and maintenance
At Nearform, we take an end-to-end approach to mobile development that optimises cost versus output in each of these stages. Our approach allows us to deliver state-of-the-art applications while saving our clients money in five key ways.
1. Simplified development with React Native
React Native allows a single team of developers to write code once and deploy apps to both Android and iOS devices simultaneously. With no need for two separate development streams, you cut the workload in half — which can result in big savings.
In fact, it can cut costs by up to 45% and accelerate time to market by up to 50%. In our work with TELUS Digital, introducing a core design system allowed the team to focus on the UX of each of their telecoms microservices instead of duplicating effort on basic app components.
TELUS can deploy apps faster with reusable code, ensuring a consistent experience for customers across channels. “Generally the time to market for any new app is about 30-40% less than it was, which is huge,” says Steve Tannock, Director of Platform, Technology & Tools at Telus Digital.
React Native is also inherently scalable thanks to its efficient use of code. Our approach is scalable too, as we can dynamically adjust resources as projects change in scope. The two combined mean we build for today, tomorrow and beyond.
2. Expert support for every stage of development
Whether you’re building an app from scratch, updating an existing app or transferring your development to React Native, our end-to-end service covers everything from the initial concept and design through to deployment and updates.
Because every step is facilitated by a dedicated, experienced team of Nearform experts with diverse skills, everything you need to succeed is packaged together. There’s no need for multiple consultancies or technical partners, keeping costs down and projects manageable.
This also means we can be transparent and accurate about your entire cost of development, giving you greater control of your project budget. Our Ignite discovery process, for instance, provides the upfront costs of delivering your shift to React Native, along with a clear roadmap for making it happen.
3. Design, development and deployment — right first time
The development process consumes the biggest amount of an application’s budget — and if there’s a lot of back and forth, the costs mount quickly.
At Nearform, senior is our entry level for our developers, designers and strategists. That means we have a wealth of experience throughout our team developing apps for different verticals and industry leaders.
The result is apps that are built right first time, on time.
But it’s not just about the applications we deliver. We also lay the key foundations for your future, building capability and helping you to develop the in-house skills needed to succeed long after we’re gone — which means you don’t have to spend money on additional support down the line.
4. Open source excellence to boost capabilities
Incorporating open source solutions (OSS) can dramatically reduce development expenses compared to building everything from scratch. In a study by The Linux Foundation, 31% of the respondents said that paying for the equivalent software capabilities would cost four times as much as developing with OSS.
At Nearform, open source is integral to our craft. Our global network of people is passionate about pooling ideas and sharing the spirit of innovation to push programming forward. As well as making thousands of open source contributions every year, we also maintain more than 150 packages to support the wider OSS community.
Being part of this movement means our clients benefit from code and concepts from additional experts beyond Nearform that bring yet more efficiency to the development process.
By harnessing OSS, we can use components that have already been built, which speeds up development, accelerates time-to-market and helps us build better apps more quickly and at a lower cost.
5. Uncover hidden savings opportunities
The app landscape rarely stands still, and being aware of changes and knowing how to mitigate them is key to a successful long-term strategy. One example is the recent legal ruling that means iOS apps are now able to guide users to external payment processors and avoid Apple’s 30% commission — its “app tax”.
At Nearform, we’re constantly working with our clients to turn regulatory change and industry shifts into opportunities. And our experts’ deep experience building secure, compliant apps and payment flows for global leaders makes them perfectly positioned to identify and tackle those challenges.
We can implement features like fully compliant checkout design, end-to-end performance optimisation and seamless integration with current systems. And the results can mean huge savings. For instance, if you have a subscription app making $1 million a month in revenue, circumventing the Apple tax alone can result in a $300k monthly saving.
Ready to turn your cost centre into a value generator?
When they’re designed, developed and deployed in intelligent ways, mobile apps have the potential to be an unrivalled source of value for organisations. The trick is to avoid costly pitfalls, like duplicating workloads and allowing scope creep to slow you down.
With an approach that prioritises delivering quality experiences faster, by taking advantage of React Native, open source and other multipliers for our team’s technical skills, Nearform has everything you need to:
- Reduce your costs by 45%
- Launch new releases 50% faster
- Tap into a talent pool that's 60% larger
- Deliver consistent, hyper-personalised multichannel experiences
To learn more about how this approach can work for you, get in touch with the team today.
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