Mobile application development has become highly competitive these days.
How?
The number of mobile app downloads by the users was 149.3 billion, which is expected to reach 352.9 billion mobileapps in the year 2021.
Also, if we talk about the mobile app revenues, then check out the below image where the revenue is expected to reach288.9 billion U.S. dollars by the year 2020.
These mobile app statistics clearly mean that the use of mobile apps is going to rise significantly and so will beits development.
And, if you are looking to develop a mobile application, your application is definitely the one that is expected inthe above stats.
To develop a mobile application, you need to do the following things-
- Plan your app development strategy
- Understand your app requirements
- Research on the market
- Analyze your competitors
- Analyze the various app development platforms & their trends – iOS or Android
- Look for your budget
- Hire a mobile app developer or a development company
All the above things except for the last point, you can do that by yourself. But, to design and develop your mobileapplication, you need an expert to do it.
Why?
Let’s understand it.
Why Do You Need to Hire the Best Mobile App Development Company?
Here are the reasons-
- Increasing demand for technology in each industry, each business
- Increasing competition
- Increasing demand for quality over price
- Increasing hassles of hiring the right in-house development team
- Lack of domain expertise
So, when you are looking for a great business growth and revenues out of your mobile app, you should never compromiseon the quality of your mobile app. Hence, you need to choose the right mobile app development company.
How to Choose the Right Mobile App Development Company?
1. Look for references
To find the best mobile app development company, you need to start looking for the companies that develop mobileapps.
For that, your first step needs to be looking for references from your contacts. Ask your-
- Clients
- Ex-employees
- Ex-clients
- Ex-employers
- Family/friends
- And, anyone who would recommend you the mobile app development companies
References from the peers help you to look for the companies that have been experienced or heard a great appreciationfor their work.
Make a list of mobile app development companies and add the ones received from the above contacts there to furtherevaluate them.
2. Search online
Once, you’re done with getting references from your contacts, you need to literally go online and search for themobile app development companies.
Following are the ways you can search the mobile app development companies online:
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On Google
So, obviously, you know how to search a mobile app development company on Google.But, still, sharing is caring, so here it is-
You can type any or all of these following words to search for thelist of app development companies:
- Mobile application development
- Mobile application development companies
- Mobile application development service providers
- Mobile app development services
- Mobile app development services company
You can also look for the suggestions that are offered in the search box by the Google itself.
So, you would receive 10 results on Page 1 of mobile app development companies that Google feels the right for you.
But, when you are looking for the right one, it is recommended to go and search the companies till page 3 on Google.Because those companies are the best mobile app development service providers, but, because of ranking shuffles, theyare here and there.
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On LinkedIn
How would you utilize LinkedIn to get a list of app development companies?
Here, in the above image, is an example of how you can post on your LinkedIn to get a long list of mobile appdevelopment companies.
Look at the highlighted portion. This guy received almost 40+ comments with a list of references of mobile appdevelopment companies. Now, add them to your list.
So, this is how you can do it on LinkedIn.
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On Twitter
Now, utilize Twitter to find the mobile app development companies.
Log in toyour Twitter account and search the phrase, “mobile app development” and here you go-
Once, you press “Enter” after typing “mobile app development” in the search box, click on the tab, “People”(highlighted box in the above image).
Here, you will get a long list of mobile app development companies on Twitter which you can further add them to yourlist.
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On Quora
Quora is one such platform that has too many questions similar to your queries (irrespective of your query type)
Here is how you can utilize Quora to search for recommendations of mobile app development companies:
Type “mobile app development” in the search box of Quora and you will get a long list of topics that people discusson. In fact, if you don’t select any topic from the suggestions and just click “Enter”, you will still get a long listof suggestions as for the result.
Here are the results that you will receive- multiple questions on the same query.
Look at the number of answers (highlighted) above in the image. But, don’t worry, you don’t need to gather all ofthem in your list.
Only the ones that seem common to most of the answers should go to your list.
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On Clutch
Clutch is a directory where you can find a list of mobile app development companieslike below:
Choose the category: Mobile App Development
Make sure you’ve selected the sort by option as, “Number of Reviews” which will help you get the list of mobile appdevelopment companies that have received the maximum number of reviews.
Add the ones to your list that you found common across all the online platforms.
3. Observe their communication
So, now you have the long list of mobile app development companies.
What’s next?
Look for their right contact email address and send them your inquiry.
Why do you need to observe the communication?
This allows you to understand which companies look highly experienced and have expertise in handling clients.
Now, what do you need to observe in communicating with those companies:
- The turnaround time in responding to your 1st email
- The way of writing a response
- The language of their email and its complexity to understand it
- Whether they straight away jump on discussing the pricing or not
- Whether they are eager to work with you
- What is their response rate?
- How professional are they?
- And, much more
Start giving ratings those companies as per your observation in the list that you’ve prepared.
4. Check out their portfolios
The most important step to hire the mobile app development company is to check their portfolios.
Almost all the mobile app development companies have their portfolios listed on their own website.
So, when you start the conversation with those companies, also check out their portfolios and mark their portfoliosas- excellent, good, ok, poor and very poor. This practice will help you shortlist the companies to consider for thefinal selection.
5. Check out their website & blog
Just looking at the portfolios does not help to decide the best mobile app development company for your mobileapp.
You need to research everything that the company is offering, in their website.
What to look in the mobile app development company’s website for your benefit?
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Testimonials
most important part after the portfolio is the testimonials as it helps you know what their clients speak about themand their services.
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Case Studies
case studies will help you understand what were the requirements of their clients and how they had delivered theresults.
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Whitepapers
This helps you understand how much knowledge, expertise, and experience they have with each of the technologies theyare using.
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Blogs
This helps you understand how much they care about their audience and look to solve queries help them stay updatedthrough blogs.
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Infographics
This helps you understand how much they focus on utilizing each platform to share their knowledge and expertise.
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Videos
This helps you understand how much they look forward to making things easier for their prospects or clients.
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Awards
This helps you understand whether they’ve ever received an award for their services. If yes, then the company can beconsidered for the further
communication.
Once, you are done with looking at their entire website, you are good to move further analyzing their expertise andexperience.
6. Look for their experience & expertise
To select a company which is the best in developing mobile apps, you need to figure their experience and expertise aswell.
And, how would you do that?
- Study their ‘about’ section on their website to know about their inception
- Compare the years of existence to the number of apps delivered
- Look for what all technologies they’ve expertise and experience in
- Also, check if they have any media mentions (this can be optional because expertise is not always covered in the press)
- Look for their social media shares and engagements as well
- Follow the CEO/Founder/Co-founder on social media to see how knowledgeable, expert and experienced they are
Make sure you add these things to your list as well.
7. Consider long-term relationship
Why considering a long-term relationship is important to choose the best mobile app development company? Because-
- Your requirements are not finished with just app development
- You would need maintenance and support after app launch
- You would also require some other app versions, features, functionalities, etc. to be added, modified or removed
- In future, you might look for developing your app on other platforms as well
- You might also look for a new website or web application for your future business plans
So once, you will choose the right app development company for you, the business requirements will be recurring.
8. Discuss your app requirements
Now, you’ve gathered enough data to know a mobile app development company before choosing it for your mobile app.
So, your next step is to discuss your mobile app development requirements.
Discuss what all things are you looking for in your mobile application, like-
- What platform do you want to target your audience
- Whether your app will be an on-demand app
- What all your competitors are having in their mobile app
- Discuss the security aspects of your mobile app
Once, you’ve shared your app requirements, then allow them to share their suggestions. Why?
Because-
- They might have developed a similar kind of application
- They have more knowledge, experience, and expertise of what kind of apps user prefers
- How should be the UI/UX of your mobile app should be suggested by the app development companies?
- According to them, which platform would be the best for your app
- And, much more
All these discussions would help make you understand how the company is involved in your app development to help yourbusiness grow.
9. Discuss the estimated timeline
The most important part while choosing the right mobile app development company is the timeline.
Most of the time, what happens is that the companies promise a certain date and time to grab the project withoutestimating the appropriate time the app development will take.
Hence, the companies are unable to deliver the mobile apps on time.
But, what is an average development time for a mobile application?
To avoid any confusion ordelay in the mobile app delivery, you need to make sure of being transparent and understand that the mobile appdevelopment at least takes 2-4 months.
10. Understand their testing cycle
Now, you know that how much time your mobile app development will take. So, the next step to choosing the rightmobile app development company is to understand the entire development lifecycle, how much time the company is goingto dedicatedly test your mobile application.
Why testing your mobile application is important?
- Because if the testing is not done, your app might crash
- Without testing, your app might have bugs or exceptions with which your app might fail
- Sometimes, some functionalities work on one device and it is not compatible with the other. If this remained untested, it leaves a poor experience for your users.
In short, if the mobile app is not being tested appropriately, then the quality of the app suffers and lead tofailure.
11. Understand their maintenance policies?
As you know that your app development requirement would go on and on and on. So, it is equally important tounderstand their maintenance policies before selecting the mobile app development companies.
This helps you to keep in mind about what will be the process of app maintenance in the future.
12. Discuss the pricing
The most critical portion is to discuss the pricing of your mobile app development with the companies.
Don’t ever get yourself fooled around on the cheap price for any app development. Because you might get trapped for alower price app which is not even as per your expectation.
So, discuss the pricing, add them to your list. This will help you shortlist the most preferred ones.
Never compromise quality over price.
13. Prepare a list of preferred ones
Now, based on the list that you prepared, you need to shortlist the ones for reconsideration for your mobile appdevelopment.
Take enough time to analyze the ratings that you’ve given to each of those mobile app development companies for theirportfolio, knowledge, experience, expertise, professionalism, and pricing.
Based on your analysis, create a list of top 3 or 5 and then further analyze them.
14. Finalize the best one
Before choosing the best mobile app development company, you need to understand the following image:
Don’t expect that the companies delivering your mobile application faster and cheaper compared to others will developthe high-quality mobile apps.
Also, the companies developing brilliant mobile apps with cheap rates might take more months to deliver your app.
So, always understand what is more important for your business? Speed or cost or quality
Based on the above analysis, choose the best mobile app development company for your enterprise.
Conclusion
To choose the right mobile app development company for your enterprise is a difficult task. So, follow the above 14steps and develop a successful mobile app for your business growth.
If you are still confused, contact ourexperts here.
