A Guide for Hiring an App Developer/Agency for your App
In this age and era, the use of gadgets, especially mobile phones, has spread like wildfire. Within mobile phones, we find everything we need a button or touch away. What makes everything accessible at a button or touch is application software downloadable or pre-installed in phones.
Mobile applications are types of software designed specially to run on mobile devices and they serve to provide users with services similar to those accessed on computers. These applications (apps) generally have limitations and isolation in functionality. The specificity of these apps is now what makes them more desirable since consumers now handpick whatever they require from their devices.
A few top IT trends your developer should know about
It is crucial for whoever you hire as your app developer to know about the hottest information technology trends so that he/she knows what to compete with or what to assimilate into the app.
Let’s start off with Artificial Intelligence (AI), a technology developing at an alarmingly rapid rate. Over 37% of international organizations have implemented AI in some form and the number of industries utilizing this technology has grown by 270% since 2015. An estimate shows that 80% of emerging technologies will involve AI. The percentage of businesses offering chatbots may grow to 80% by the end of 2020. Then, we have Virtual and Augmented Reality (AR/VR). Providing viewers with a fully immersive and interactive 360 degrees virtual experience, the AR/VR market is currently at an estimate of $1.6 billion and, moreover, seven in ten media planners plan on adding AR to their future strategies. 71% of customers would prefer shopping at stores with AR experience. Smart Speakers and Voice Assistants are yet another rapidly growing trend since currently, over 46% of people use voice assistants, and about 34% of the people who don’t own a smart speaker are keen to purchase one. Mobile internet penetration is also on the rise, led by South Korea with 71.5% of its population being mobile users, followed by the USA at 69.3%, Germany at 68.8%, UK at 68.6%, etc. Other than that, mobile web internet traffic is reaching astounding figures. 61.09% of Asia’s total web traffic comes from mobile phones, followed by Africa at 57.42%, a global percentage of 48.2%, etc.
Rise of the cyber era
Technology has come a long way and it is ever advancing, thanks to the thousands of engineers, technicians, researchers and investments in R&D. Now, when someone starts up a new business, the first thing they do is make their business known. They spread the word, advertise, help facilitate their customers, get reviews, offer good customer service, etc. More than 90% of these actions require the internet.
Anyone wishing to have a chance at starting out well with their business must create a mobile responsive website, or even better, develop a special branded mobile app. Mobile apps are relevant and necessary for every sort of company, and innovations in technology not only expand what they can do with mobile apps but also increase accessibility to a larger count of consumers.
We can safely assume the importance of mobile apps to be incredibly high. Some examples of how apps help businesses flourish are: apps that function as online stores; these apps use single digital profiles to connect onsite activity and app activity while sharing customer preferences and shopping carts across the two platforms (providing ease and convenience for customers), apps that enhance in-store experience; some brands like Walmart use apps to send customers push notifications with personalized offers or messages while they shop in a physical store and others like Home Depot lets customers place items in an online cart through their apps and then the app tells them the exact location of the items when they enter a physical store, apps with non-transnational content; such as those giving users excuses to log in (even when they aren’t immediately interested in purchasing) such as Nike keeping fitness records and monitoring performance and others like Sephora that manage loyalty programs and inform customers about communities or events occurring near them via messages; etc.
There are some developing IT trends that your app developer should keep an eye out for too.
Heads up before you hire a developer
One of the most important things to keep in mind is how long the development of your mobile app will take. Forming ideas and keeping research up takes over a couple of weeks while planning the whole app takes over a month, and then the actual app’s development takes place within two or more months. Another crucial thing to keep in mind is how much the development of your app will cost. The cost of developing an app depends on a lot, including your location. For example, if you consider creating an app in Dubai, you will have to estimate the cost of developing an app in Dubai as well as how to find one of the best developers for your app in Dubai since you want seamless performance and functioning that is as perfect as can be. Yet another important facet to keep in mind is how you will choose a platform to launch your app.
You would do well to thoroughly research on all of the factors mentioned above in order to create a successful mobile app.
The importance of securing your app’s activities
Having strong app security is critical in defending mobile devices from digital fraud which shows itself in the form of hacking, malware and other criminal manipulation and activities. Protection from all this is necessary since the apps on our mobiles do everything for us from taking pictures to recording fitness to managing our finances and budgeting, essentially helping us even in running mass scale companies.
You and your app developer should know why mobile app security is important since the digital fraud risks undergone with questionable app security could be having user financial login credentials stolen, credit card details being leaked or stolen and resold, hackers having access to business networks, wholesale identity thefts, devices being used to spread malware across to uninfected devices, etc. When any of these threats become a reality, the results are obviously not a pretty sight. End-user experiences turn out being negative leading to a terrible and potentially permanent impact on the reputation of the app owners as well as ongoing financial losses.
If you want to gauge how secure your mobile app is, you should run a double check on each of the following: making sure your app’s code is secure, encrypting the app and all data with file-level encryption, only using authorized APIs (Application Programmatic Interfaces), applying high-level identification, authentication and authorization, alerting the user in case of any vulnerability detected, using the best cryptography tools and techniques and testing repeatedly for better app security. It is also advisable to take any other measures you see fit.
Originally published at https://emiratessg.com on April 9, 2020.
