Shaun Williams, Content Writer, Goodfirms

With the phenomenal rise in digitalization and the growing access to the internet amongst the global population, the demand for mobile app development is increasing. Mobile apps have evolved as one of the key contributors to the growth of digitalization. Digitalization has turned traditional mobile phones to smartphones and has given rise to a new world where almost everyone has a smartphone, rich or poor. According to Statista, the number of smartphone users worldwide in 2021 is 6.378 Billion U.S. dollars and is estimated to surpass 7.5 Billion U.S. dollars by 2026. Hence with this growth of smartphones, the popularity and need for mobile app development are also increasing as a smartphone is worthless without a mobile app.

Mobile app development is a challenging task that needs a lot of concentration, capital, and time. Depending on the type of app, the number of features and functionalities required, the time and money needed for the app development also varies. It is a fact that the more complex the app design is, i.e., the higher the number of features, the more will be the total development cost and time. In this post, we will be discussing some practices that can be very helpful in reducing the overall cost and time spent on mobile app development. Money and time are the two most important factors for any industry, and so are for the mobile app development industry. So, let's move forward and learn more about some practices that can help startups and aspiring developers to reduce their app development cost and time considerably.

#1 In-depth market research

In-depth market research is a crucial factor that very highly contributes to saving time and cost of mobile app development. Market research is a vital and fundamental step towards building a mobile app. Well-versed research plays a significant role in determining the success of a mobile app by guiding the team to find the right concept for app development and analyzing if it's needed in the market. Market research helps you understand the real-world problems of smartphone users and assists in deriving the right and efficient solutions for them through your mobile app. Let's dig in a little further to understand how it helps save money and time in app development.

An improper or say insufficient market research doesn't genuinely help find the correct problems of the daily smartphone users. Even if, by a bit of research, a team can figure out their issues; however, without an in-depth understanding finding the appropriate solution is impossible. Companies often consider finding the problem as the real deal of doing market research, but this thinking is wrong in many ways. To figure out the solution, it's essential to know what kind of help users want; without knowing this, you might end up delivering an app that functions the same way as many other competing apps and thereby fail to serve its purpose. This not only ends as a waste of time and money, but also fixing the app after final app deployment takes extra time. This can be avoided by doing an in-depth market analysis and figuring out the right solutions to the correct problems. Spending a little spare time on market research is comparatively less time-consuming and better than reworking an entire app. Hence a thorough understanding of the market is the first step towards saving time and money.

#2 Outsourcing 

There are many ways of getting the mobile app developed, but when it comes to sorting out the one that saves the most time and a considerable amount of money, the best option is outsourcing. Other options like in-house app development and hiring freelancers take a significant amount of time and money. Assembling an in-house app development team is a very taxing and time-consuming task. Recruiting a team and then providing them with sufficient training takes a substantial amount of time. Moreover, the money spent buying resources and hiring and training the team is also much compared to outsourcing. Hiring freelancers for app development is also inefficient when it comes to saving time; although we can save some money, the work quality can not be expected to meet the required standards.

On the other hand, by outsourcing app development to a suitable service provider with a team of experienced developers, the app's quality is guaranteed. Moreover, a lot of time is saved as this team of experts can deliver your project faster than any other method. Also, the money spent on outsourcing, although higher than freelancing but less than in-house app development, is pocket efficient when considering the expertise and quality of the app.

#3 Regular testing 

Regular testing is the most crucial part of mobile app development that saves money and time. Unfortunately, many amateur developers neglect the importance of testing and keep it aside to be done at the end of the app development cycle or at irregular intervals. This is a very bad practice that can lead a project to the wrong direction by neglecting errors in the project. Even a tiny loophole can end up as a big arrear for the project and a security concern if missed. Solving this issue can take a lot of time and money, considering the extra hours of labor spent on correcting things that could be spent on new projects. These circumstances can be very well avoided by regular testing. Testing should be carried out on every step of the development cycle and for every design implemented, to figure out the loopholes and correct them on time before it leads to a big problem. More preferably, automated testing should be employed to save a larger amount of time and improve the working efficiency of developers by automating the testing of repetitive tasks.

#4 Employ APIs

API stands for application programming interface and is often used in mobile app development. APIs act as an interface that contains sets of protocols and definitions which allow a product or an app to communicate with other apps or services. For example, suppose you want to provide navigation facilities to your users in your app. In that case, you can easily do so by taking the license for using a third-party API such as GPS API and Google Maps API. 

Google Maps is the most accurate navigation facility, and hence you can integrate such a facility in your map without designing a map of your own. Like this, you can add any feature in your app without designing and writing the codes on your own. This saves a substantial amount of time that would be otherwise spent on writing codes for such features. Moreover, by eliminating the labor needed for such tasks, you can save a good amount of money. Hence integrating third-party APIs is a preferable practice to save a lot of time and money while providing the best in class features in your app. App development service seekers must check the list of top app development companies cataloged by Goodfirms to find the right service provider to cater to their needs.

Wrapping up

Developing a complex app with many features and functionalities is indeed a taxing, time-consuming and expensive process. But by employing the proper practices, a powerful mobile app can be developed along with saving a lot of time and capital. In this post, we mentioned some techniques that will surely help save a considerable amount of time and money in mobile app development. Performing in-depth market research, integrating various APIs, carrying out regular testing at every step, and outsourcing app development are some of the proven ways to reduce app development time and cost without compromising its quality. Therefore, it's advisable to follow these practices to release a powerful app bound to be successful in less time and money. 

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About the Author: Shaun Williams is a content writer with Goodfirms, a research platform for Cloud Computing, Ecommerce companies, Translation services companies, among many others. He enjoys communicating ideas and knowledge creatively and also ensures that the readers never suffer from boredom while reading his posts.