Three ways to reduce the cost to build your app

• September 10, 2019
• Mayank Singh

It’s much better to build an app that has one feature that functions perfectly versus building an app with ten features that all break..

Spending less time designing a more robust app because it’s a lower priority can help reduce the cost to build your app. At the same time, if you’re trying to build an app that’s ready to win a market, you’d likely want to spend more time and budget crafting the right experience.

1. Reduce the level of design

Designing an app means creating the part of the app that people will see and interact with. While design is more than just how something looks, a designer will primarily be responsible for creating the layout of the different pages in your app, how your app’s features will look, and deciding how the different pages in your app flow together. Depending on the level of design you aim for, your budget could vary greatly.

If you’re building a basic app as a test, this will likely require a lower level of design compared to an app that you’re looking to have market ready and be featured in an app store. For instance, an iPhone app that uses many Apple user interface design elements will cost less than an app that has many custom designed elements. Here are two examples that compare Apple’s standard design elements to custom-designed ones:

Apple’s standard Calendar design vs Sunrise’s custom calendar design

Apple’s standard camera design vs Instagram’s custom camera design

If you're planning to have a Camera feature in your app and decided to use Apple’s standard Camera design, this would cost less than a custom-designed Camera feature. The cost of a custom-designed Camera could vary greatly depending on the design direction you go. Before you start, it may seem clear what needs to be designed but as you make decisions, the design evolves. Getting to a final design usually requires assessing a number of different design tradeoffs. Some original design decisions may need to be scrapped, while some may need to be explored further. This takes time and thus, often requires additional budget.

2. Reduce the depth of each app feature

Every feature you want to build requires a certain level of depth. The same feature can be big or small depending on how you want it to work. For instance, if you want people to be able to login to your app, do you want them to be able to login with an email and password or do you also want them to be able to login with Facebook and Twitter? The difference in cost and time to build this feature would vary depending on which option you went with. If you build a login that just worked with email, this would cost less and take less time than a login that worked with email, Facebook, and Twitter combined. Prioritize what’s most important for your potential customers and your business. By reducing the requirements for each feature, this can help lower the overall cost to build your app.

3. Remove app features

Which features must you build now and which features could be added later? Reducing the number of features you decide to build can greatly impact the budget needed to create your app. If you realize that half of your features are just 'nice to have' and decide to add them in future version, you could reduce the cost of creating your app by over fifty percent.

When it comes to budgeting, there are many different options you can consider but whatever you decide to build, you should aim to meet the same level of quality across all your app’s features. You don’t want to have to start from scratch when you update your app because the first version was built poorly. In most cases, the first version of your app is a foundation. You want to lay the groundwork for future app development, not have to scratch everything and start over. There are many resources for this. Bluerang.com for example, helps startups and enterprises find tech partners, hassle-free.

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Tagged in : TechApps