If your business is in a growing moment, it’s time to take the next giant step–a business app. It should help your customers access products and services quickly while building a good reputation.
But, developing a simple app can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $50,000. If providing the cash for the process is a hustle, you should consider taking affordable small business loans to fund the process as it’s a good investment that will serve you well into the future.
This guide explores the process of building your app and how to secure financing for the development process.
The Importance of Having Your Own Business App
A well-developed and designed app can impact your business in the following ways:
Credibility
A polished app that’s with a pleasant user experience raises your business’ credibility among your target audience. On the other hand, a poorly made app will cause customers to reject your services.
Strengthens Your Brand
With an app, customers can interact and communicate with your business easily. Regular interaction creates awareness of your brand, as this is where you demonstrate that they can trust you. An app is one of the easiest ways to cement brand loyalty.
Brings Services Closer to Customers
An app is the fastest way to get your services and products to your customers. They can view and transact with your company quickly and safely.
Improves Customer Engagement
Clients have a direct way of reaching you. What’s more, you can tailor-make the communication channels to suit their needs. For example, you can have a help desk feature baked into the app.
Marketing Channel
While apps perform essential functions like providing prices, news feeds, and general information, one of their key benefits is providing an exclusive marketing channel to present your promotional material uninterrupted.
Stand Out From the Crowd
Many of the small businesses generally don’t have apps, set yourself apart from the rest by developing one.
5 Points to Consider Before Starting
1. Do You Need It?
Ask yourself if you need it. Find out if it’s indispensable to create the app by assessing the pros and cons of building an app.
Not only that, research and make certain that it will provide value to your customers. Otherwise, it will lay unused by customers and your team.
2. Cost
Even if you develop the app yourself, it’s a costly affair. Work out if you can’t fulfill your needs using third-party apps, which would be cheaper.
If a third party can’t adequately serve your needs, taking out a small business loan should sort you out.
3. Category of App
There are different kinds of apps in the market, including:
- Gaming apps
- Lifestyle app
- Travel apps
Evaluate customer pain points and get an app that’s tailored to solve them. For instance, getting an app with POS features would be pointless if all you need is a social media app.
4. Platforms
Android and iOS have different ways of handling apps. While iOS has a standard way of hosting and displaying apps, Android handles various apps differently.
Therefore, create separate apps that operate smoothly across these devices. In addition, tabs have different display dimensions, so you’ll have to optimize for those devices as well.
5. Who Will Run It?
Apps get broken, so they need maintenance and updating to fix bugs and add functionality. You have to decide whether to keep in-house experts or outsource these tasks since downtime can cost you revenue.
How to Get Financing for Starting
These are the best ways to stamp up the financing required to develop an app:
Bootstrapping
That means funding the process using your cash or savings.
Family and Friends
Are one of the best ways of getting a loan without interest, complete with flexible repayment periods. If they believe in your project, they can give the money in exchange for shares in the business.
Grants
A grantor will give you funding with no requirement to repay. However, the grantor will have specific instructions for using the funds.
Crowdfunding
After pitching your app idea to a crowdfunding platform, individuals will fund it if its potential convinces them. Crowdfunding works a charm for tech-based projects.
Business Credit Cards
Card work like personal credit cards, which means high-interest rates.
Small Business Loans
Are excellent sources of funds, featuring reasonable interest rates. An example is the SBA loan.
Investors
Consider angel investors or venture capitalists for funding. They can open many business doors because of their connections and expert advice. Venture capitalists will want a piece of equity in exchange for funding, though.
Main Options to Create Your Business App
Before creating your app, you have to conduct competitor and market research to gauge your requirements. That allows you to set goals and define the user experience.
After that, there are three main ways of developing an app:
A) In-House Developers
Developing the app yourself is potentially the cheapest way of doing it, but it takes time and specialist coding skills to pull it off. Your team must be familiar with coding for the Android and Apple platforms too.
The great thing about an in-house build is you’ll produce an app that’s tailor-made to serve all your needs right off the box.
B) Freelancers or App Development Agency
If doing it in-house sounds like such a hustle, consider hiring a freelancer. They have the required coding skillset to create an app, so you don’t waste time doing it.
However, building an app for the different platforms requires different coding skillsets, which a single freelancer may not possess. Hiring other freelancers might do the trick, but you’ll need to manage all of them and then find someone to stitch all the pieces together.
That’s where an app development agency comes in. They have a group of coding experts and a management team to oversee the entire process. They will take in all your requirements and present a fully-baked app.
C) App Builder Platform
Lastly, you could use app development platforms such as AppyPie, Zoho Creator, and Appery. Most of these provide drag-and-drop app development components for stress-free app making, even without coding knowledge.
While they quickly develop apps, they produce simple apps that often need customization for full functionality.
Is Creating a Business App Worth It?
An app is worth it as it improves customer engagement, strengthens your brand, and is an exclusive marketing channel. Before developing an app, conduct market research to discover your customer needs and verify that a third-party app can’t resolve that need.
Upon confirming that your business can’t do without an app, develop it with your in-house developers or through an app building platform. Alternatively, hire freelancers or an app development agency.
Conclusion
Even if you build an app yourself, it’s expensive so consider taking a loan since it’s a valuable asset. Follow the link in the introduction section to learn more about small business loans.
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