About five or six years ago there was a craze where companies wanted mobile apps to promote their businesses, but these days it’s far less common.
Why is this, are apps a thing of the past?
When the app craze started we decided to jump on the bandwagon and taught ourselves what to do. Although we made a few apps internally and for clients, it became apparent that they were a project best suited for a software development agency rather than a web agency. They use different languages, and you need to follow different internal procedures. Although they are not any more difficult to produce than a complex website, they are time consuming which essentially means that they are expensive to produce, which puts them out of reach for many small businesses.
There are now ways that web agencies can no make mini websites and package them as an app. This keeps the development costs much lower, but also limits functionality. These apps, albeit cheaper, do no more than you could do with a mobile-friendly website, and here lies the issue.
Apps that are coded specifically for the device are usually far more expensive than people imagine, and those that are cheaper are based on websites and offer no more than a website could (except maybe inclusion in the AppStore or Google Play Store).
For this reason the craze for apps seems to have disappeared, and fewer small business want an app for the sake of having one.
There are still lots of cases where a bespoke app will be beneficial and outweigh the initial cost, and many app developers have written systems that they package and sell/lease at the fraction of the cost, but in many cases neither of these are viable.
Before thinking about an app, think about a mobile-friendly web site (or web-app) where everything is made specifically for mobile devices, works similar to an app, but at a fraction of the cost.
And believe it or not, we can help!
We are Webbed Feet, we make web apps and mobile friendly websites.