Jan
30

Is Your App Idea Special?

Let’s be honest – app ideas are hard. The world is big and fast-moving and what’s hip today might flop tomorrow. Having what feels like a good app idea is only the first small step in building a successful product.

 

The Process

So, imagine you’ve dreamt up a great new app idea, what should you do? The very first thing any entrepreneur should do is check if their idea already exists, but not for the reasons you might think.

You’re not looking to see whether the door is shut in your face, you’re looking to see if the idea has potential in the market. Most app ideas are not purely original. Tons of people are having the same great idea each and every day. But that’s okay! Other people with similar ideas prove that it is a good one! Seeing competitors shows that there is a need and it is feasible concept.

Realistically, you ARE going to find a few apps that do some similar behavior to what you’re imagining. Whether those apps are wildly successful or quietly unnoticed, you’ll have to innovate and find ways to improve upon these existing products. Think about features that are missing, designs that can be improved, and new ways to monetize. Do you think this market has room for another app? How can you attract the most attention?

 

What if you go app hunting and can’t find anything even close to your app idea? In this scenario, your app idea typically falls into one of three cases:

  1. Your app idea is original and nobody else has thought of it
  2. Your app idea has been discovered to be too costly to develop
  3. Your app idea isn’t appealing to enough users

Naturally, you want to be in the first category, but what if you’re not? This is hard, and you’ll likely need to reach out to potential users and gauge their interest. Continuing down this path is certainly risky but can still be very successful.

 

The Bottom Line

The harsh reality is that most app ideas are uphill climbs. You’ll work, you’ll iterate, you’ll advertise, and sometimes you’ll fail. Failure is a tough pill to swallow, but it’s a fantastic learning opportunity. Did you make a mistake when assessing the viability of your idea? Did market conditions change? Or did someone else beat you to the market while you were developing? No matter the outcome, use this experience to craft your next great app idea.

Jan
17

Native vs Hybrid Apps – Part II

We recapped the technical decisions of whether you should build natively or with a hybrid solution back in this post. But let’s be honest, native is “technically” always best.  The real reason client’s opt for hybrid solutions comes down to one thing. Money.

Why pay for development twice when you can build it once? Right? riiiiiight?

Well, sometimes.

If your desired app is largely simple elements and displays content: like reader apps or lists or shopping or blogs then YES HYBRID! If your app only needs maybe one or two things that need native integration then PROBABLY HYBRID.

The catch with hybrid is that any part of the app that needs any sort of custom UI or native phone integration like maps or camera, etc is going to need to have a native-code bridge written between your hybrid solution and the source. Which means we’re back at native development twice (Android and iOS), and your money savings is starting dwindle. Remember this image?  Also, that in-house .NET team you thought could whip this up in their free time? They might get a bit stuck at those parts.

When there are new updates to the operating system from Apple or Android these third-party providers need to write their own hybrid platform features to interact properly – causing you to be reliant on their timeline for upgrades instead of implementing code updates the day the OS is made public.

To recap the recap:

Hybrid is cheaper in that it often uses web developers (lower rate) and is mostly build once, use twice. Great for simple projects, first/test versions, or apps that generally are reproducing web content verbatim.

The caveats are that:

  • You’ll still need to build native bridges to more complex parts of the app (bye web developers!)
  • You are reliant on updates by your third party platform to maintain pace with new operating system updates (dependencies)
  • It still has those technical limitations of UI and responsivity (design award bummers)

I’m sure you’ll find lots of articles about both – we’re obviously a bit biased being an all native shop, but we HAVE built a few React Native prototype apps to see for ourselves.

But sometimes, after listening to a clients needs, features, and budget, we still find ourselves recommending hybrid. Honestly! We want you to get the best value AND the best app! Success for everyone!

So take what we’ve said above and before and assess for yourself! Do some pro/con lists. Ask your mom. (Or don’t ask your mom but DO ask the opinions from many potential contractors). Read more than one article.

We hope at the end you come back and choose to build your app-baby with us (if its native 😉 )

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