Mobile Development

A mobile app makes sense when you need something a browser can't offer: notifications sent by the system, working without internet, access to the camera and sensors, in-app store payments or an icon on the phone's home screen. If none of these apply to your product, a well-built web application is often cheaper to build and maintain, and users don't have to install anything.

An important thing to decide before you start is how the app will be built. A native app, written separately for iOS and Android, gives the best performance and the earliest access to new system features, but it means two codebases. A cross-platform solution, such as React Native, lets you run one team and one codebase for both systems, at the cost of reaching for native code where necessary.

Native or cross-platform. For a product that relies heavily on device capabilities or needs maximum smoothness — native. For a product where most of the work is forms, lists and communication with a server — a cross-platform solution lets you run one team instead of two. It's a decision about maintenance costs for years to come, not about the technology for launch.

Both systems at once, or one to start with. Releasing on one platform first lets you validate the product more cheaply. Which one depends on where your users are.

How much data to collect. Every permission the app asks for reduces the number of people who get through the first launch and increases the formal requirements. Ask for what you actually use, at the moment it's needed, not at startup.

What not to do. Don't register the developer account with the vendor's details — getting the app back can then be difficult. Don't plan a launch without a buffer for the review. And don't copy the website layout to the phone one to one; it's a different context of use, not just a smaller screen.

For us, a mobile app is a whole system: a backend with an API, push notifications, behavior analytics and an admin panel where the client can see what's happening in the product. We handle App Store and Google Play publishing together with the client — from developer accounts and compliance with reviewers' guidelines to store descriptions.

After launch, we measure real usage instead of guessing: which features are alive, where users drop off, what's worth simplifying. We plan the next releases on that data — that's how the Fit Paradise training app got new iterations of its workout plans in step with how its users actually trained.