Featured image for Don't Overlook These 3 Important Things While Managing Mobile App Development Cost

Don't Overlook These 3 Important Things While Managing Mobile App Development Cost

Featured image for Don't Overlook These 3 Important Things While Managing Mobile App Development Cost

Having a distinct mobile app has become a necessity for businesses today to expand and sustain their reach. However, the development cost of a mobile app is highly variable, often giving businesses nightmares. In this blog, we’ll discuss the 3 most important things that will help you manage the app development cost better.

Decided on getting your own mobile app built but worried about the cost? Well, let us tell you that your concern is completely reasonable as the cost of mobile app development varies from app to app and company to company.

From the app type and features to the technology and development time, there are multiple factors determining the final mobile app development cost. If that wasn’t all, some factors can also make you go over-the-budget. Hence, tactful cost management becomes essential without compromising on the app experience and features.

Don't Overlook These 3 Important Things While Managing Mobile App Development Cost

Understanding the Scope, Features and Functionality of the App

In order to determine the right cost of any mobile app, it is important to first discover what type of app is required along with its features and functionalities. These are considered as prime factors to development costing. In addition to that, a unique, user-friendly yet attractive app design is another vital factor contributing to the final cost.

The app developers gauge the required features and functions based on the business logic, flow, purpose, and goal of the mobile app. The simpler the app’s flow, the more affordable it is. Contrarily, complex functionalities will shoot up the costs incredibly.

Let’s take an example. A simple fitness app, offering users fact-based articles, tips, and tricks of being fit will cost lower than the one that collects the users’ data and makes workout recommendations accordingly. A gaming app will also prove to be expensive, thanks to its high-definition graphics and user-control needs.

Managing Mobile App Development Cost

Proper management and planning, right from the app’s conceptualization till its subsequent releases, are critical to keep the development cost in check, achieve the desired ROI, and fight the creeping scope. For that, you can rely on three significant aspects, discussed below, to have more control over the app development cost.

Connecting Features and User Pain Points

You need to avoid falling in the trap of both under-conceptualizing and over-conceptualizing during the initial stages of product discovery. That can be done by defining precise product goals, business outcomes, as well as product features, that effectively address the pain points of your app’s target end-users.

You need to find practical answers to questions, such as

  1. What problems do your potential users have?
  2. Does your mobile app bring solutions to those problems?
  3. What would be the core functions of your app?
  4. What kind of functionality does your app require to deliver a satisfactory solution?
Once you discover these answers, you will save yourself from spending your precious money into unwanted features that don’t serve any purpose from the end-users’ point-of-view, rescuing you from over-conceptualizing.

On the other hand, the lack of strategic thinking along these lines, called under-conceptualizing, will result in an app having fewer features than required.

So, identifying users’ central pain points and coming up with appropriate functionality as solutions will help you stay in the budget & yet meet your business objectives.

Communicating Right During Development

Once the core requirements that define your product scope are established, the project enters the main development process. It is in this stage that you can avoid inflating the app development cost through right communication at each phase of the development lifecycle.

A mobile app is made up of several systems and subsystems which is why it goes through multiple developmental stages. That, in turn, can lead to the risks of losing track of the actual product requirements in the whole process.

To evade such risks, there needs to be proper management of knowledge transfer throughout the product development. You have to communicate your exact needs and voice concerns, if any, all through the process. That would enable the team of developers to verify the technical needs against the predefined business requirement documentation. If there’s a lack of or ineffective communication, the product scope of your app will expand unnecessarily, eventually increasing the cost.

Safeguarding Your Budget with Change Management

When a mobile app is undergoing development, it is bound to encounter certain changes. These changes take place due to multiple outside aspects, such as user requests, new and emerging technologies, unanticipated market research, test results, and market competition, which can drive inevitable changes in the otherwise well-planned development process.

As a result, often the initial requirements of the product get modified, causing your budget to inflate.

However, you must note that you’ll have to accept and implement certain changes. The only thing is to be flexible yet careful about not losing the original goal and requirements of the product. For that, a product requirement document could be created that would act as the reference point for both the developers and product owners to determine the necessity of change. Managing these deviations better will ultimately help control the cost.

More Development Facets to Consider

What we discussed above are the three primary factors having a huge influence on the mobile app development cost. Apart from these points, there are numerous other aspects to consider as well. The list of other such factors includes the size of the app development team, hourly rates, project timeline, third-party integrations, quality analysis/testing, security, administration services, and app maintenance and support services.

The center point, however, remains the same – tactful planning and management of the core product requirements.

Conclusion

The mobile app market has been booming of late and it’s likely to continue this streak with companies of all sizes realizing its importance. Still, the mobile app development cost is something that concerns businesses the most universally. While the ultimate development cost of a mobile app will vary project-to-project, the three important factors we explored here will definitely help you manage this cost significantly.

Author bio:

Varsha Solanki is a Digital Marketing Strategist at Space-O Canada, a mobile app development company. She has 3 years of experience in the Information Technology industry. She spends her time reading about new trends in Digital Marketing and the latest technologies. You can connect with her on twitter and linkedin.

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