Spending lot of time in orders/complaints collected via email/phone ?
With a mobile app, clients can order / log complaint which can be directly tracked in your web dashboard, saving 4 to 6 hours in a day with zero manual errors.
You are not alone, as mobile application development is time consuming, expensive compared to building a web app and was considered to be domain of corporate and out of reach for small businesses .
There are three things that have changed this landscape
- Explosion of access to mobile phones
- Penetration of internet in third world countries
- Development of technologies that allow rapid mobile application development reducing the time and hence cost for developing an app
Majority of people who will not reach out to your sites earlier, are now reaching out using their mobile devices.
Hence more and more (smart) businesses are looking at mobile application development and mobile friendly sites.
Making mobile friendly sites (“responsive design” in designer speak) is no more a luxury, but a necessity. Mobile friendly is the new normal.
For various companies, this opens up a new population, who can consume their services from any part of the world with a smart phone.
Yes, but do I need a mobile app ?
There are few cases where mobile app work better than mobile friendly sites when you need
- Offline usage
- Keep track of user account
- Faster load
- Better and customized user experience
- Push notifications of custom offers, other notices etc
There are two fundamental choices when it comes to mobile development
- Native
- Hybrid
(Actually nowadays there is a third one called progressive apps, but will leave that for now)
Naturally, the question is what is the difference ? I am interested in building a mobile app, which one is right for me ?
Here are some points to consider in making the difference
Native Apps (in comparison with Hybrid)
- Native look and feel based on platform
- Faster
- One per platform so can use the components which users are used to on respective platforms
- As there are code required per each platform hence is more costlier to build, upgrade and maintain
Hybrid Apps (in comparison with Native)
- Look and feel not like native but more web like (to be honest this was true in 2004, is not completely true now with super improvements and new frameworks like Ionic)
- These at times may appear slightly slower than native but that again is barely noticeable with faster mobile devices
- One code base which is used across all platforms
- Easier to build, update and maintain
- Faster to develop
Which one do we recommend ?
Most of the app requirements we have seen so far, could be easily fulfilled by Hybrid Apps.
Hybrid apps are fast, relatively cheaper and easier to maintain and upgrade.
Ionic Framework is our choice of framework to build hybrid mobile apps.
However, we have seen in some cases, even a Progressive Web App(PWA) suffices instead of a Hybrid App.
How much of time savings can we expect with Ionic Framework ?
We have built, tested and release, MVP, Beta and even real apps in matter days or few weeks to enable our clients to move ahead with MVP.
If you need to find out which one works better for your requirements, Let’s talk !