It doesn’t take any pundit to understand the huge growth opportunity for the mobile app development companies in the years to come. Despite having exponential growth all through the previous decade, mobile apps continue to play the central role in the digital revolution around us. Earlier mobile apps were largely seen as the digital domains for big enterprises and brands. Now even small businesses and aspiring startups are launching their mobile apps.
But since building a mobile app and running it like a successful business involves expertise, investment, and continuous input from human resources, the app projects should learn from the examples of other apps and businesses running app business successfully. Apart from these learnings, app businesses also need to learn the nuances and intricacies of new trends that are continuously shaping the mobile app economy.
Obviously, the mobile app ecosystem is more matured in 2020, and hence running an app business now in 2020 is a lot different. Here through the length of the blog post, we are going to explain the key challenges for running an app business in 2020 and how to address these challenges.
Native App vs Hybrid vs PWA
As a multitude of options for choosing the right type of app opens up for the developers worldwide, making the right choice seems to be a bit difficult and complicated. Native apps have always been a great option for the big brands and enterprises who don’t mind spending a fortune for uncompromising app performance and native look and feel. On the other hand, hybrid or cross-platform apps continue to be popular for the vast majority of small enterprises and startups who want to build their mobile app presence across platforms while spending a small budget.
In between these two options, enterprises and aspiring app businesses now can opt for the Progressive Web Apps or PWA, which is Basu ally about bringing the browser-based web app and native mobile app experience together. PWA, by turning a business website into an app-like interface with loads of native UX elements, has emerged as a great option for small budget enterprises. Options of hiring app developers in India are fast embracing PWA as a mobile app alternative for small businesses. Any enterprise by opting for PWA can actually ensure a mobile and web presence with the same technology. In 2020, we can expect a lot of startups and small companies to embrace PWA instead of hybrid apps for cementing their mobile presence.
Context-Aware In-App Monetization
As for monetization, mobile app businesses will continue to experiment with new methods. It is already well known that the vast majority of mobile apps don’t just make any revenue from their apps. As app development, maintenance and support are getting expensive with every passing day; app development companies can no longer afford to take the question of revenue for granted. This is why most of the app publishers and development companies are now focused on making revenue and continuous learning, and all their design and development decisions basically concern these aspects.
Premium apps or paid apps as a monetization strategy has already become old and outdated. Unless you are already a big brand with an established value proposition for a large audience, you cannot get away earning a hefty revenue with a paid app. Freemium app or gated app features that require the users to pay for advanced features or app version has also become aged as a monetization method. Unless you can prove your paid features or the paid version to be worthy of a price tag, the users are likely to continue with the free version that they started with.
Only in-app ads or in-app marketing stood out as the most effective method of monetization for the vast majority of mobile apps now. From mobile games to media and entertainment apps to social media and chat apps, almost across every app niche, there is a scope of monetizing certain services and products while the users are actively using the app. The opportunity of sales increases when the deliverables are offered to the users more contextually or befittingly to their respective scenarios. This context-aware in-app ads or sales are likely to gain popularity as a monetization method in the years to come.
MVP Approach to Development
Minimum Viable Product or MVP as a development approach focusing solely on the basic or elementary app features in the beginning and iteration based on the user feedback in the following app versions, has become hugely popular all over the globe. The value proposition of the approach for the development companies and new app projects is huge. MVP approach allows the developers to build and market a basic app that can always be developed further with subsequent value additions.
This approach can save the initial development cost, resources, and time for the development companies and can help them to hit the market faster. At the same time, for several design and development decisions, they can rely on audience feedback or iteration from the app users. This iterative development process will help the companies to release an app and then make value additions as per the audience’s feedback.
Conclusion
Running an app business in 2020 is more difficult than ever before. As the app market is continuing to be more competitive and crowded, making your presence felt with a great app and reaching out to its ideal audience base requires experience, expertise, and skills. But for that, you need to make the basics right, and we actually provided here guidance regarding the same.
