Defining a mobile app strategy

So you are planning to enter the booming word of mobile applications and want to add value to your target customers? If yes, you might be confused about the app development strategy to begin with. Let me tell you that, you can end this apprehension if you just carefully focus on your customers. Their demographic factors, behavioral patterns and other indicators will answer all the whys and hows pertaining to the development of the mobile app.

So how do you define your mobile app development strategy for your business?

Does your business need a mobile app?

There are entrepreneurs who are enthusiastic about making an app for their businesses. However there are various factors that has to be considered before plunging into a making a dedicated mobile app.

Does your business have brand familiarity?

If you already have a familiar brand then SERPs is not a priority for your brand. Your brand name is already known and people might be already navigating to your site from Google by typing the brand name itself.

If your business is not not have a strong brand recognition, i would suggest you to go for a mobile website instead. Mobile websites can be built for a cheaper price, works on all devices without cascading issues and helps remarkably in SEO to bring you business.

What kind of market you cater to or who will be the users?

Is your brand very end consume-rish? Do you plan to create an ecommerce app that showcases pictures of the products? If so, you must search developers who have worked extensively on these UIs. Focus on the swipe gestures of your application. Do you want to rank higher on SEO? Then have the review writing section accessible through a swipe gesture. Gesture based UI are taking over buttons and flat designs are leading the market.

Going deeper into the development pattern:

Once you are clear about your target audience, you can decide the approach to craft your mobile application. Generally there are 3 basic approaches to mobile app development-

Native development:

Native development gives access to all the native tools in such as the android SDK or iOS SDK. Codes are not reusable in native development. In other words this is the perfectionist’ way to develop your app. It gives the best results as far as performance is concerned but on the other hand, it increases development costs and development time.

If you are planning to go for native development then have a break even analysis at place. The cost will also vary with respect to the complexity of the project.

Applicable for high performance game apps and apps that need faster code execution.

Hybrid app development:

Hybrid app development is one of the most preferred ways to develop apps. Most of the time when your application requires web based features such as social sharing, hybrid app development is the way to go.

Hybrid app development employs the same technologies that are used to build web applications that includes, CSS, HTML and JavaScript. After the coding is complete, the code is wrapped in a native app format which makes them execute exactly like native codes. One of the major advantages of developing a hybrid app is that you create your web and mobile app side by side. Hence, if you make a hybrid app, targeting the web tools becomes way too.

On the down side, the code execution is not as fluid or smooth as native apps. Hence it is advisable that anything graphic intensive be avoided.

Cross platform app development:

Some of the cross platform tools such as Unity 3d, appcelerometer, mosync etc. has become quite popular recently and they are highly rewarding too. The major advantage of cross platform app development is the ability of the developers to write once and deploy on multiple platforms. One of the best thing about cross platform tools is that they allow the developers reach a majority of features that one would only get with native development. The performance is not as good as native development but it saves huge on costs and development time.

On the downside, a developer has to hone skills of a particular framework and has to depend on the vendor for updates etc. Platform updation and features is updated by the vendor itself which might cut down on the flexibility as one gets from

Sketching a favorable app development strategy is based on your requirements which in turn must be derived from your target audience. Make sure to evaluate all the factors and then arrive at a perfect mobile app strategy.