How much should an app cost?

This is a question that we are asked all the time and while it is tempting to merely respond with a “How long is a piece of string” kind of answer, I always manage to refrain. The fact is that app development can cost anything between £1000 to £1,000,000. For this reason, the piece of string analogy is not an inaccurate one.

 

What we do say is that an app should cost you what it is worth for you. The cost of an app depends on the amount of features that you choose to have and also on what platforms you wish to have it on. The amount of features and what platforms you want the app to be on should depend on the following;

1) Who are your customers? – this will tell you which phones they will be on and then what platforms you should be building on.

2) How can you increase engagement and make life easier through an app? – this will tell you which features that you will want to be including.

3) How will it help the bottom line? – don't think I need to elaborate on this…  

Ultimately you want to be improving your bottom line so in this way the app has to make commercial sense and be part of a larger strategy.  With careful thought going into the motivation about an app, you will come up with what you want it to do and then you can get fair pricing based off that.

During the early phase of discussions about mobile strategies with companies, we try to find out what is the business driver that is pushing for this app to be developed.  After getting an understanding of a business we try to understand if it is it a tactical app linked to specific marketing campaign or whether the app will be core to their strategy.

For example if you are a publication like the Economist, the idea of delivering your content over mobile is core to their business. If you are hotel chain and you want to allow your customers to book hotels over an app, that is not at the heart of their business but it is part of an overall strategy. If you are a large FMCG and you want to create an app to promote a new product, it is a tactical app around a particular campaign. Depending on the proximity of the app to a companies core strategy should indicate how much a company should be willing to invest. 

Companies should not build an app for the sake of it, careful consideration and ROI analysis should be conducted first. When approached in the right way, it can revolutionise a business, when done with little strategy or thought, it can be an expensive waste of time and resource. 

Next week, I will be talking about how the new wave of opportunities in mobile are enterprise apps and the personalisation of IT in the workplace. 

 

Alex Grant is a guest blogger for esocialmediaUK. He can be contacted by email – alextgrant@gmail.com.

 

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