It’s easy to assume that you need to be doing what everyone else is doing if you want a chance to be popular or relevant in the business world. Sometimes, it might be obvious when this might mean ultimately taking a move that distracts from your business goals in a meaningful way, but when it comes to something like having a dedicated app for your business, it’s hard to tell whether that’s simply the way the winds are blowing.
Designing an app that is effective, accessible, intuitive, and polished, isn’t something that happens by itself. It takes focus and resources. Therefore, before you jump into it, it might be worth being sure that’s the case.
What Do You Do?
The first and biggest question you must ask yourself when it comes to solving this problem is simply, does the service you provide require an app? It might be that you feel the answer is less about the need and more about having a platform that simply represents the best and most convenient way possible to engage with your brand, but it could be that it simply makes little sense for you to do so. However, that being said, with the number of businesses that do have a curated app across a wide variety of landscapes, it’s becoming less common for businesses to not have apps, though it might be that the time is not yet right for you.
Do It Right
If you are planning on designing an app for your brand, then be sure to do it right. Customers will be turned away from poor experiences that are difficult to use, unpleasant to look at, or just generally poorly designed, and this is something that will be reflected in the user reviews and eventually back on your brand in some way. This might mean that you need to outsource the development of this app if you feel as though the talent necessary doesn’t currently exist in your team.
However, it might also mean being aware of certain technologies that can help to make your app as effective and fluid as possible, such as a rest api if you know that you’ll be needing it to engage and interact with other services to operate, or accessibility options to consider for those who need them.
Resource Prioritisation
As mentioned previously, it might be more a question of whether the time is necessarily right for your business to develop an app, and if you’re aware that it’s something that you’ll get to further down the line, that can help to defer some of the pressure. However, it’s important to be aware of the costs involved that you might not currently have access to before you jump into it. The financial impact of hiring a team to develop and maintain the app might prove more than you expect, especially as updates are consistently required to fix issues that users will inevitably find throughout its use.
This might translate to trying to just hire an IT department, but that’s a level of development your business might simply not be at yet, and it could be more detrimental to your resources than the benefits the app provides.
