Technology
The 3 biggest misconceptions surrounding corporate app development
Published by linker 5
Posted on July 2, 2020
8 min readLast updated: January 21, 2026
Global Banking & Finance Review®
Company
Published by linker 5
Posted on July 2, 2020
8 min readLast updated: January 21, 2026
By Ritam Gandhi, Founder and Director, Studio Graphene
Virtually everyone is needing to find ways to connect to others without physical interaction due to COVID-19. This goes for individuals, community organisations, and businesses of all kinds and sizes. For the latter this is especially important as, for many, a lack of customer footfall or ability to accommodate clients in an office means that a company’s survival may entirely depend on finding an accommodating digital solution.
A company app is arguably the best solution given the accessibility of apps in the age of global lockdowns. Unable to venture to their local high street stores, consumers have turned to their phones to offer digital alternatives to the ways we would traditionally interact, shop, and manage our finances.
Businesses have been mobilising in the face of COVID-19 to adapt the customer experience and bring their business into customers’ homes. This can be seen in the growing uptake in digital banking, for instance; recent data from Virgin Money shows that almost 30% of consumers have downloaded a mobile banking app during the UK lockdown. The data also indicates a long-term take-up of digital banking services, a trend that was already underway before the crisis. According to the same report, 83% of consumers intend to use digital banking to the same or more frequently post-lockdown.
So, what does this tell us? Coronavirus has accelerated the digital adoption that was already taking place before the pandemic. Having now experienced the benefits of conducting activities on their phones, consumers will likely continue to utilise apps that offer the same (if not enhanced) experience.
For those that haven’t already, I would recommend not letting this opportunity pass by. Now is an opportune time to develop an app that can run alongside your business, and which ensures that your customers and clients can still have a personally curated experience when interacting with your company. Well-establish companies will likely already have fantastic apps in place. But for those just dipping their toes in the water, below I will attempt to dispel some of the most common misconceptions about building an app – and demonstrate why businesses of all sizes stand to benefit from expanding their digital offering, even after the era of social distancing is behind us.
There’s already tech at your disposal
The biggest untruth that surrounds app development, most likely a remnant from when smartphones first entered the mobile market, is that you have to design every aspect of your app from scratch.
While there is no precise answer to the question “how much does it cost to develop an app?”, the cost and time involved in this task will naturally act as a deterrent to those who are keen to have a fully-functional app up and running in a matter of weeks. Indeed, the big variation in app development prices is largely due to factors such as the number and complexity of features requested.
I would therefore encourage people to utilise ready-made solutions that will save your development team hundreds of hours of time. These solutions are plentiful, and they range from embedding Google Maps into your delivery updates to incorporating Stripe to handle all financial transactions done through the app.
There’s no reason that you would have to create an entirely unique mapping or payment system when so many already exist. The price, if there is one involved, of utilising such technological solutions will be a fraction of the cost of paying a team of developers to create equivalent bespoke technology for your business.
If your budget is limited, prioritize features that can be integrated into the app for a fraction of the cost of building them from scratch. Once you have the basic functionality of your app nailed, you can thereafter continue to test it, hone it off the back of user feedback, and generally improve the app over time.
What you will likely need to do, however, is reach out to experts to find out which of these pre-established solutions are best suited for your specific app’s main function. Third party agencies that can help assist you on your app’s development journey – whose involvement can range from merely advising to handling the entire development process – are abound in the UK technology sector. It would serve company leaders well to reach out to such organisations to see which established tech products are the best choice for you, whilst weighing up the costs, quality and brand recognition of the options available.
Apps are a marathon, not a sprint
Another misconception I’d like to clarify is this: building an entire app-based store front for your company is rarely, if ever, a one-off initiative. After the initial investment of time and resources to develop a quality and robust app, the nature of fast technological progress and evolving consumer needs means that your app will require regular updates.
Ritam Gandhi
A robust, high-quality app should not encounter many problems with bugs or glitches, however it is still something worth bearing in mind as you prepare to launch your product. To minimise the risk of bugs cropping up, apps will need to go through a stringent round (and ideally, multiple rounds) of testing. It might be helpful to think of the ‘beta test’ phase as a soft launch for the app, whereby the product can get real-life exposure in the hands of early users. This quality assurance (QA) testing is a process of ensuring that your product is of the highest possible quality before it becomes available to the end-users.
Ideally, manual tests should be performed by highly skilled and experienced testers – again, a 3rd party company can help here. An extra pair of eyes is always helpful, as specialists will be able to spot issues that the developer may not have noticed.
Once any glitches and issues are flagged and addressed, you can be confident that your app will work flawlessly once it launches to market. After this point, one of the best ways of assessing how effective and well-received certain features are is by asking the users themselves. Customer experience is a key factor in driving customer loyalty and retention, and this is as true for digital platforms as it is in physical premises.
Whether this feedback is highlighting the popularity of certain features or suggesting ways of improving in-app customer support, it is of paramount importance to see that the user’s needs are being met and that the app provides a positive user experience.
That’s why it is crucial to incorporate a method for your app’s users to easily submit their feedback, and you should ensure that collecting real time feedback is an ongoing part of the process as you grow and refine your app after launch.
Simple is better
Contrary to what an ambitious business owner developing their first app may think, you do not need to have every potential feature conceivable included in your app. If your company is, for example, a financial services provider, there’s no reason that your app needs to be able to do anything other than allow customers to take out a loan or send money to a friend.
You should strive for the same level of simplicity and ease that customers interacting with your company physically enjoyed pre-COVID. Anything more than that is a gamble, as previously loyal customers may become dismayed at your app’s complexity, having only downloaded the app to access the same exact product or service that they seamlessly enjoyed previously.
This can be accomplished by planning out your app’s layout from the beginning. You should identify the ideal basic core functionalities needed of your app before anything else, and then seek to implement such features through the easiest-to-use UI (user interface) possible. If user feedback indicates that additional features may actively improve your app’s service offering, by all means pursue including them in a software update, but don’t risk alienating users by being overly ambitious from the beginning.
I would urge businesses start with an MVP (minimum viable product), which will allow them to test the functionality of the app and better understand the user experience. This is a way of testing market demand and learning what works and what doesn’t in the shortest time possible. From here, you will be able to gauge whether the intended app will satisfy users and, if not, where the areas for improvement reside. Again, this links back to the importance of customer feedback; place your users at the heart of the app development process to create a successful solution.
Ultimately, it’s up to decision makers to decide whether their company needs an app and how to go about developing it. Working with trusted partners can make this process much simpler; they can help you define the core purpose and functionality of the app, help get an MVP product to market, and develop a long-term plan for the continued growth of the product.
However, if they do go down this path, it’s of utmost importance that they familiarise themselves with the points laid out above. A well thought-out, intuitive app can improve a customer’s experience with your company immeasurably – and creating such an app doesn’t need to break the bank or take months of your team’s time. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to invest in your company’s digital offerings may be the best decision that you’ll make all year – and one that you can reap the rewards of for years to come.
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