Estimating the Cost of App Development

Creating your own app allows you to include features that will help you boost its selling proposition in the market. It also gives you an edge over other apps, since you are already familiar with the apps that you can use as benchmark. While there might be a hundred more apps from various categories, including entertainment, lifestyle, utility, and social networking, it is highly important that you consider the cost of mobile app development.

Apart from your building and marketing strategies, you also need to know which strategy will give you the best return of investment. One way to do this is to manage your costs in developing the app. There are several significant factors that you should consider when developing an app. While this can be tedious on your part, it will help you understand how much you need before you start spending your organization’s funds. Generally, cost of developing apps range between $3000 to $100,000, or it can be greater. It will depend on your app’s features and complexity.

Here is a list of pointers that you need to consider so you already know the costs of the app you are developing:

• Make your idea clear and concrete. While it may be healthy to have more than one idea when developing your app, it can get overwhelming. Thus, you may end up overspending if you try to put everything that you want in one app. Be clear with your goals. What do you want your app to achieve? What market do you want to tap? One of the best ways to save on costs is to look for prototyping tools on the Internet and create a mock-up of your app that includes all the details that you want to show. These details and the mock-up itself will help you determine your app’s requirements, thus it will be easier for you to look for a company that is capable of delivering the design and structure that you want, but it will also be easier for you to determine a company that can give its services at the best cost.

• Determine the selling ability or marketability of your app. You do not need to wait for the entire app to be built before you launch it.  You can get to the market using a prototype. This way, you will be able to gauge if your customers are willing and ready to purchase and use your app. Once they have already tried your app, they can give feedback and you will be able to save on costs significantly.

• Determine if you need to create the app in-house or outsource it. It is advisable that you keep your costs and expenses low when you are still starting with your app. You can opt to work with an outsourced provider who best understands and knows your app requirements. This will allow you to quickly offer the app to your market.  Once it kicks off and once you already see its performance then you can decide if you will opt to bring in the app’s development and maintenance in-house. This is a very effective way of saving on costs, especially for beginners.

• Putting out your app in the market. After you have created your app, the next important thing to do is to let your market know about its availability. You need to identify the best venues where your app will be best known. You need to identify the strategies that will help you sustain your business.

• Determine your marketing and publicity strategies.The most effective way of publicizing your app is by being endorsed by third parties. Your app can featured in blogs, press coverage, or just get talked about by other people. Word of mouth continues to be the best form of publicity. These strategies will help you manage your costs, since you will rely on user and customer feedback and reviews that can affect the total performance of your app’s marketability.

• Determine if you need to create a cross-platform app.Cross-platform apps are not always able to offer rich experience to users. There is a reason why there are different coding languages for different platforms, which have their own software development kits. Such apps are often riddled with bugs and fail to offer consistent experience across platforms.

• In case of failed apps. There might be cases when the app you have created will not work just the way you have designed it.  Not all app ideas become successful since there might be limitations and bad decisions that were made along the way.  Obviously, this will incur you extra cost and will give you more expenses since failed apps will require you to either repeat the whole process or identify the blocks that you experienced along the way and redesign the entire app.

• Total app cost. The total cost that you incur on app development depends on the app design, developer costs, the type of app, and your budget. However, these costs can vary depending on your preference.  While there are firms that will serve you for about $1,000, there are others who will charge $50,000 and above. It all depends upon the type of app you want to develop, the firm you hire for the job, the final app quality that you are looking for, your app marketing strategy other necessary factors that you will later on implement in your app.

Creating apps has been popular nowadays, with the advent of mobile platforms and other social and online venues that enable to connect everything digitally. While app development can be something fun and useful, it will be helpful if you weigh the costs first and determine if this is worth the money of the organization.