Whether you build it in-house or through a professional app development firm, or hire a bunch of premium techies make sure you invest your time and money in these 5 activities.

Businesses today have more than a handful of choices to narrow down on their Mobile application Development vendor. However, with no pricing parity in the market the decision to arrive at a right-pricing strategy is quite challenging. With the options of Rapid Prototyping for an MVP to building a robust full feature App, you have the choice to either go with freelancers or small-to-medium-to big sized Mobile App Development companies. With no proper guidance or strategic requirements in place, they can either make or break your mobile app, and eventually your mobile-first approach and business strategy.

Starting from a few tens of thousands to over a couple of million dollars, the costs of mobile App Development leaves a decision-maker perplexed. So how does one arrive at an acceptable price-point that does justice to your investment in mobility. What qualities in an App Development Vendor would you look out for before signing on the contract? Whatever you decide you, we have picked our 5 must-haves that should go into planning your costs for mobile app development.

1. Rapid Prototyping : While Rapid Prototyping is great for idea evaluation, contests and workshops, enterprise mobility apps and customer-centric apps with deeper revenue models must spend more quality time addressing usability needs and integrating smarter KPIs to keep competition at bay. Your minimum investment should go into building a functional product to test and understand the missing data links and understand customer needs and preferences. The important thing to remember is that this is not your final shippable product, but this is something you can go to market to test and garner early feedback. The costs for Rapid Prototyping may range anywhere from 5000 to 25000 USD or more depending on the depth of functional features you have in the app.

2. Better UI / UX : User Interface Design and User Experience is key to the success of an app as good UI and UX improves stickiness factor. Users prefer an app that provides them not only an ease of use through intuitive navigation, but also provides them a memorable experience with right messaging, timely alerts and notifications and shareworthy content. Your Mobile App Development company must have communication experts who can draft the content with the right call-to-actions that can sell. UI/UX Design, Testing and implementation requires considerable amount of budget allocation, but with the right design team in place you can be assured of better results.

3. Analytics & BI : It is important for businesses to gather insights and measure KPIs on the usage of their App as well as learn customer behaviour over a period of time. Through mobile analytics, you can not only get a report on the number of goals and conversions, but also get rich business intelligence and insights on user preferences, locations, device choice and define the scope for improvements. You should look out for integrating your mobile app with your ERP, SAP, CRM and/or SCM wherever required. With the omni-channel concept today, brands have more than just one customer touch-point. So it is imperative to have a system that can provide you with a comprehensive view of your sales and brand performance.

4. App Discovery : With a million apps hitting the search results it is important to invest in a marketing and promotion activity that helps users discover your app on the store. Your App Development agency should be able to bring to your table an appropriate strategy for users to be able to discover your app. A company with digital marketing expertise providing you content marketing, inbound marketing, growth hacking and viral marketing ideas help you gain a competitive edge. Trust them when they tell you that your App Icon, the Featured Images as well as your App Description Content on your App Store require a revisit.

5. Support for Updates : With OS version upgrades, newer devices and newer screen sizes, your App is not a one-time solution but requires constant curation. Bringing in incremental innovations and changes to meet customer preferences, address bounce rates or low conversions, improve experience and also increase revenues or brand equity. Partnering with your app development firm on the longer run will help you stay apace with the latest developments in technology and trends that shape the mobility domain.

As a round-up, Mobile Application Development costs matter most when your app is of strategic importance to your business and adds value to your brand equity and bottomlines. When you choose a Mobile Application Development company, look for these pointers to partner with the right firm.