Best PitchMost businesses do not need an app. A few really do.
An app is not a better website. It is a different thing with a different cost, and the gap between them is bigger than it looks from outside. Somebody has to find it, choose to install it, and then keep it on a phone that is already full. That is three decisions you have to win before your app has done anything at all, where a website only has to be opened. So the first question is not what the app should do. It is whether the thing you want is an app.
Signs it should be an app
- People use it several times a week, not twice a year — a habit survives an install, an errand does not
- It has to keep working with no signal, in a warehouse, a field or a basement
- It needs the camera, the location or the phone's own scanner as part of the actual job
- You need a notification that arrives on the lock screen rather than an email that waits
- Your staff use it all day, and the phone is the tool they are already holding
Signs it should be a website
- Somebody needs to book, buy or contact you once, having just heard your name
- You want to be found by people who do not know you exist yet
- The main thing it does is show information that changes now and then
- Your budget has one project in it, because an app still needs a website to be discovered from
- One app, built once, running on both iPhone and Android
- Published under your own developer accounts, in your business name, not mine
- The same back end the web version uses, so there is one set of data and not two
- Push notifications, if there is a genuine reason for them and not just because they exist
- App Store and Play Store review handled, including the parts they reject the first time
This costs more than a website and takes longer. Both stores can say no.
Two platforms, two review processes, and an update cycle that is days rather than minutes — that is the real difference, and it is why an app sits in the Product package rather than beside a one-page site. Apple and Google both review what gets submitted and both reject things, sometimes for reasons that take a round to sort out. I have shipped software that handles real customers and real money, so I am not guessing about any of that. But if you describe what you want on the call and it is a website, I am going to tell you it is a website.
An app is software rather than a site, so it is quoted inside the Product package, after a call. Like everything else here, no website I build takes longer than 30 days from the day you approve the scope.
Tell me what you are trying to build.
The form takes about ten minutes. I read every one myself and reply the same day.
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