Building a Native Mobile App? Answer these Questions before you Proceed

The mobile app development boom is at its peak with innovators digging in deep to explore the untouched world of mobile applications. Their urge to innovate never dies, which keeps them at par in building new meaningful and useful applications.

The blooming mobile trend has also asked business owners to make a quick shift in adopting mobile app technologies to keep up with the market’s pace. But, where to invest? Native app development or hybrid app development? The question remains unanswered.

The above-stated question not only haunts business owners but also mobile development companies around the globe. The pressure on development companies has also risen due to ever-changing technology and companies’ demand for top-quality products. According to a survey, it is found that only 16% of users would retry a failed app more than two times while 79% admitted a max of two attempts for the same. This creates an additional pressure on mobile development companies to produce quality applications.

As a business owner, it’s important to identify your targeted audience and their favorable platform. This will help you in taking your final call on whether you should go for a native mobile app or a hybrid app.

Not lingering on much, I’d like to shoot following questions to you, which may help you in deciding if native is your cup of tea.

Does your targeted audience use iOS or Android or likewise?

As a business owner, you need to figure out what is the preferred platform for your potential customers? Do they use Android, iOS, Windows, Blackberry or Symbian? This will play a crucial role in dictating future terms. It’ll help you to decide on a single platform, which you need to consider for the native app development process.

If your answer to this question is more than one platform then I’m afraid to say, native can’t be your choice. Go for hybrid instead.

The cost of developing a native app is directly proportional to the number of platforms you want it to be built in. Not, just the cost, but time, expertise and efforts go hand in hand as well. So, before taking a step forward you need to be crystal clear about the platform you want to target.

What’s your budget?

Budgeting is one of the prime factors for mobile app development agencies as in most of the cases, the budget is finalized before a green signal is given to the development team. Defining a platform is, therefore, important for any development company to get things started.

Native apps are generally expensive as compared to hybrid ones. You require a specific bunch of professionals to create apps for different platforms, which can directly be related to increased cost. Hybrid apps, on the contrary, are cost effective and platform independent. Developer uses “write once and publish anywhere” technique in case of hybrid apps, which not only saves time and money but also gives you an advantage of staying ahead of your competition.

Does user experience hold utmost priority to you?

The question here is that can you afford to compromise on user experience? User experience plays an important part in app’s success and growth. If users aren’t happy how can you expect to excel in this competitive world of mobile apps?

Native apps provide a seamless user experience because they are fast, reliable and most importantly content is already there on user’s device. The website’s static content gets downloaded on user’s smart device, which helps instant loading regardless of user’s phone or device connected to a wireless connection. This results in a seamless experience for the user every time he/she opens the app.

On the other side, hybrid apps being platform independent aren’t really efficient to deliver the same level of experience as in case of native apps. After putting in all the cross-platform knowledge, skills and expertise the resultant can’t deliver, what you call an exceptional experience. Even the best of user experience architect can’t cater two different dominant players of the market: iPhone and Android users. Although, the code is written to fit both, but their style guidelines are just different from one another.

Is time a constraint?

If there is a particular deadline for the completion of project, then it is advised to go for hybrid app development. Building an app for a particular platform complying to its guidelines requires more time than developing a cross-platform app. Since the team needs to write the code once that can serve the purpose for multiple platforms, the app will be ready and running in the least time. While platform-dependent app requires writing different code for different platforms.

Do you need to target all users at once?

Another question, which you need to ask yourself is if there is a necessity to target each platform at once? There are app owners who targeted either iOS or Android or Windows (a rare possibility) first, then after a period of time moved to a different platform.

You need to identify your needs, requirements, purpose and targets beforehand. This will help you in deciding if you want to hit the market extensively or you can hold it back for a while.

Native and hybrid apps have their own positives and negatives. Asking the aforementioned questions prior to your project will help you in making a wise decision. Use your wisdom and make right choices. As they say, great choices make great products and who knows your next project can bring a revolution.