Finding the right mobile app development company or team for your dream project can be tiring and confusing. You might have already begun your search by typing top mobile app development companies in the United States/North America/India/Australia/England in the Google search bar. In a fraction of second, you have a list of the best mobile development companies or maybe NOT. While you cannot be sure about their mobile app development skills, we can give them points for their amazing search engine optimization that brought them to the first page of search engine results. Like you, there are millions of entrepreneurs who are searching for the perfect development team every other second to create a revolutionary mobile solution.
So, how to find the team that understands your idea, exhibits the same passion, and works on it as if it were their product?
There might not be a perfect answer to this but we can help. In this guide, we explain all steps that you should follow to hire the best mobile app development company for your business.
To understand this blog completely, let’s see if you understand that mobile app development isn’t a business expenditure but an investment!
Many entrepreneurs think of mobile app development as an expenditure due to which they hire inexperienced and inefficient companies thus compromising quality and performance. When you think of it as an investment, you would not be willing to compromise the quality at any cost. A well-built and high-performance application will generate more revenue than an application with flawed functionality and design. Therefore, to maximize the business ROI, it is essential for business leaders to put in more effort into selecting the right development team for their mobile application.
Do You Know Enough About Your Company & Product Idea To Be Able To Share It With Others?
Entrepreneurship is an exciting journey, especially when you are just starting with it. But this excitement often steers business leaders to skip the crucial stage of planning. When companies collaborate with other teams and companies without clarity, it can result in a fiasco. So, to begin your search for the right mobile app development company, let’s see if you have done your fundamental groundwork for the pre-development stage of your mobile application.
Start With Your Company Profile & Product Idea
Detailed company profile description lets your future technology partner understand your company’s ethics, values, business objectives, vision, and mission. When initiating the initial dialogue with potential technology partners, the company profile information will help you establish the right rapport. Eventually, your tech solution partner will develop the application with more accuracy and better clarity. Here are some of the pointers that you must consider preparing for before reaching out to different mobile app development companies:
- Business name, specialization, and target audience.
- Company location, size, and teams.
- Name and profile of the main point of contact for the entire project. Other team members’ details would be involved including those of the tech engineers too.
- Stage of the project if it is in pre-development, ready for development, or an already running product that needs additional development.
- Unique Selling Point of the product that you aim to build.
- Value offering of the product to the company. For example, the mobile application will help sell the goods or enable pickup and delivery of company products.
To find the perfect tech partner to develop your mobile application, you must be prepared to explain your company and the app idea in a comprehensive and detailed manner. Doing so will be useful in finding out if the short-listed teams or companies have enough experience as per your requirement. Companies that fail to ask or discuss any of the listed pointers would not be a good fit for your business.
Steps In Choosing The Right Mobile App Development Company
Use Your Personal Connections
Skilled and reliable developers are not easy to find because of two main reasons; increasing demand and high rates. Additionally, such developers do not take on all projects but projects that interest them or showcase enough potential. This is another reason why you should be paying more attention to preparing an interesting company profile with a detailed application flow description.
When you begin your search for the ideal mobile app development company, you should start by approaching people in your personal network. More than often, entrepreneurs forget how their connections can prove to be useful in professional matters. So, you should go through all your connections and reach out to them to discuss your requirements. The best way to do so is by using your social media profile. You can just type in something basic like looking for a mobile app development company or need assistance on a mobile application project in the social media post and put it on WhatsApp, Facebook feed, Instagram story, etc. Putting in some extra effort to make the post visually appealing and interesting can further increase the chances of a good response. While this could prove to be a good starting point for you, you cannot rely on this strategy alone.
Explore Companies On Social Media
Social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. can help you refine your search. Posting about your requirement on your social media profile and company profile page can attract good outsourcing mobile development companies. Using relevant hashtags like #mobileappdevelopmentcompany #mobileappdevelopment #appdevelopment etc. can improve the visibility of your post. That said, you can also utilize these hashtags to explore mobile app development company profiles on these social media platforms. For example, when you search mobile app development and click on the hashtag, your feed will display all posts that have used the hashtag #mobileappdevelopment. You can visit different company profiles from those posts and find potential partners.
Groups on social media platforms can also help you find a good technology partner. On LinkedIn, you can type in your request in the search bar- e.g. “Android app development company” and then click on groups. Further, you could refine your search results using various search filters such as location, company size, etc.
When you have a list of potential mobile app development companies to choose from, you can assess their social media profiles to find out more about their services and reputation in the market.
Research & Analysis
There are chances that you landed on this blog while researching only. Like mentioned earlier, every person begins the search by typing a certain request in the Google search bar. However, you must research it the right way without forming opinions based on search rankings. You should analyze every company that appears in the search results. Visiting every company’s website will give you more perspicacity about business values, services, portfolio, etc.
You should pay special attention to the portfolio section of each company. All companies list their applications in their portfolio web page. You can simply look for those applications on Google Play Store or App Store and download to find out if you like or dislike their work. On top of this, you can also refer to testimonials and client reviews to understand the quality of their client relationships.
Visit Relevant Rating Websites & Platforms
Certain websites such as Toptal, GoodFirms, App Futura, Clutch, etc. help entrepreneurs make their hiring decision based on authentic B2B ratings and reviews. Such platforms are helpful when you are looking to outsource your project to a company. In case, you wish to hire a freelancer, you can also visit job marketplaces like UpWork, Fiverr, Freelancer, etc. You can narrow down your research by reviewing companies that have developed mobile solutions for your industry. Experienced companies in your industry will add value to your project as they would be able to offer better suggestions and help you avoid common mistakes.
You should look for top-rated companies or companies that won awards. Companies that have been awarded in the past could be the right fit for you. Of course, they will be relatively expensive but you should always remember that it is an investment that you need to make wisely.
Facing The Dilemma Of Quality & Budget
After curating the list of prospective mobile app development companies, it is time to pay attention to two decisive factors; type of mobile development company and your budget. Normally, bigger companies offer expensive services but there can be exceptions but you will have to find it yourself. That said, you should not use pricing as the sole deciding factor. If you settle with a small development company because of your limited budget, there are high chances that your product turns into economic failure. So, even if you decide to go with a small development company or startup, you can ensure that you have the right people working on your product. One-to-one interviews with all developers, designers, and analysts can help you find the probability of a disastrous product in advance.
When outsourcing, you must always focus on quality. If you choose to go with companies that claim to offer mobile app development at the lowest prices, there is a high possibility that you will have to spend more time and money later on fixing the poor solution.
On the other hand, bigger firms offer the best quality products as they have experienced resources and premium tools for development. Having said that, large companies tend to hide other overhead charges that unfold as the project progresses, thus leaving clients out of funds.
So, what should you do to get the perfect balance of quality and pricing?
Medium-sized companies is your answer.
Medium-sized companies are experienced enough to offer great resources and services but have not reached the level of large companies to be able to charge unaffordable prices for their services. In the end, you should see which development company is best-suited to create a mobile application as per your business requirements.
Another factor that can determine the cost of app development is the location of the company. Generally, companies based out of the United States, Western Europe, and Canada have high development rates. Asian companies, on the other hand, offer information technology services at affordable prices but you will have to find the balance of quality and pricing.
Questions To Ask Your Potential Tech Partners
In how much time will the application be developed?
How many resources will be working on the project?
What will be the approximate costing of the entire project?
What is the total number of man-hours the project will take?
Project Specifications
Instead of talking about it, start documenting all of it. There should be proper documentation for the entire project so that the selected mobile app development company works on your project without any confusion. Moreover, the shortlisted companies will be able to submit their quotes based on the specification documents.
The scope of work should be well-defined with a vivid listing of all the features that you want in the application. When your specifications are listed in one place it becomes easier for both you and your tech partner to refer to it at any time and any stage of the project.
Following pointers must be covered while preparing the project specification document:
- Mobile application concept
- Objectives & problem statement that your application will help in resolving
- Desired platforms on which the application will be run (iOS/Android, iPad, Android Tablet, Windows, etc.)
- Target audience specifications
- Design specifications that can be any wireframes or mockups or simple hand-drawn sketches
- Feature listing and functionality of each feature
- Any third-party integrations such as social media, chat messenger, etc.
- Backend infrastructure requirements
It is better to be as detailed as possible because you leave any room for confusion, there will be more and more complications in the development process.
Bottomline
With mobile technology taking over the world, businesses from varied industries are trying their best to get noticed with innovative mobile ideas. However, very few manage to hit that mark while others fail because of several reasons. Among those reasons, the most significant one is hiring an inexperienced mobile app development company. So, if you are hell-bent upon the idea of making a revolutionary mobile solution, then you might as well do all that has been listed here. The right technology partner will embark on this journey with you with the same passion and will also open future business possibilities and opportunities using technological advancements.
