How we at Pattypets (pattypets.com) solved the app conundrum

We, at Pattypets (pattypets.com), had started with a website and were averse to building an app because of multiple reasons. Primary among them:

• We didn’t have the expertise
• Thought it was too expensive to outsource

Why an app?

We changed our mindset once we landed on the shores of UK to start marketing pattypets.com. We realized how huge the smartphone market in reality is (we did read a lot of information about the prevalence of smartphones). The difference, as I understood, is because of the fact that mobile service providers (Vodafone, 3, EE, BT etc.) subsidize the cost of the handset, which really helps in getting the latest handset in the hands of most people (the financial math behind it is hideous — but I digress, maybe a later post).

So that clinched it for us. We needed both iOS and Android apps out there as well to make it easy for pattypets.com customers and our vendors (Pet Service Providers).

UX-CX-BX

The hard moment of truth during the development of pattypets.com, was that we had little experience in UI/UX development/understanding. I had done some work in my previous life on UI/UX and the principles we tried to adhere to is based on the below:

Now that we knew that we aren’t overly skilled at UI/UX, building the apps ground up was out of scope for us. The next question was: do we outsource it? We did some research and we found that quality work was expensive. Either people we got outrageous quotes or people were asking for stake in the pattypets.com that we weren’t willing to give up or for a percentage of profits. Given the options, we decided to build it ourselves.

Native or Hybrid?

This is a never ending debate. Or the debate has ended (there is no consensus on whether there really is a debate or not as well!) Everyone in the tech world has an opinion on this one way or the other. Our constraints were very clear: we were strapped for time. Native apps take longer to build and as said earlier, no one in our team had ever built one. Hybrid apps, on the other hand can be built quicker. Yes, there is a certain fallout of using Hybrid:

• Native apps are far smoother as they have access to device hardware
• Better UX

That said, the gap between Native & Hybrid is quickly reducing. Cutting the long story short, our lack of time had made the decision for us: Hybrid was the way to go.

You can download the Pattypets app here.