WordPress – mobile app studio

As more and more portable clever phones are sold, the buzz around portable apps gets ever louder. So, every business should rush out and get a portable application developed – right? perhaps not.

The low-down on portable apps and portable websites.

let us get the definitions out of the way. mobile apps are basically little applications that you download and run on your feature phone or clever phone. An app will run locally on your handset and may or may not access services on the web to update and refresh the content that’s displayed. In contrast, a portable web portal is generally a slimmed down version of a normal website that’s optimised for the smaller display area that’s typical of feature phones and intelligent phones. mobile web presences are generally accessed via a browser app on your handset.

Which one should I choose for my business?

Well, for starters, mobile apps are cool and thanks to the Apple iPhone and google Android app stores, they are easier than ever to access and download. You will want to build up a different version of your application for each major mobile operating systems though – about 4 or 5 of those at the moment.

On the other hand, a properly designed portable web presence can be viewed on pretty much any mobile that has web access. You can’t do as much with them as you could with an application though, since they rely on web technologies and don’t have access to all the fancy built-in-features that an application running natively on your handset will have – stuff like the camera, GPS module, address book. there’s always a catch.

the best option will depend on your ventures. We can’t give you the answer, but we can hopefully give you some helpful advice before you go spending any of that critical marketing budget. Ignore the hype, forget about the cool factor, and consider the following important points before making your decision – Need. Audience. Budget.

Do I really need a mobile app or portable web presence?

Before starting out, it’s worth writing down your list of reasons for creating a mobile app or mobile web presence for your ventures. Think about what you would like to make progress towards and what you would like your product to do.

Are you trying to create a potential new revenue stream? Are you looking for new ways to promote your revenue generating persuits? Are you targeting other associations or consumers? How do clients access your existing products and services? Will your product display interactive content or will it be used as a static information portal? How occassionally will you be updating content? what kind of content will you be displaying? Is your product entertaining or unique? Will it always require internet access?

We could go on and on but ultimately it’s not a question of whether you need a mobile app or mobile website. very, it is approximately what is best for your ventures and we can only give some guidelines.

If you don’t already have a web portal or are in the middle of building one, ask your web developers to build it in such a way that it will be optmised for mobile. it may require an extra outlay but will be less expensive than starting from scratch.

If your existing web presence is relatively static but would like to enhance your online presence and get the benefits of portable advertising, consider a portable web presence. Site visitors coming from mobile ad clicks will get a good initial impression of your revenue generating persuits when they’re presented with easily readable information formatted nicely for their mobile phone.

If your product is for entertaining, is highly interactive, is intended as a standalone marketing tool or revenue generator, is designed to be used offline, or requires users to regularly access large video or media files it probably makes more sense to go down the portable application route.

Who are the audience for my mobile application or mobile website?

When we talk about audience, we are referring to two very separate concepts – the target market for your business and the overall set of people that can actually access mobile apps and mobile optimised websites.

First off, think about your existing customer base and how they currently interact with your business through your site, RSS feeds, Facebook pages, and LinkedIn profile. Since clever phones will only become more and more prevalent, a mobile application or website will give you a good platform to build on existing business colleague relationships and extend your reach to a population that is becoming increasingly mobile.

If your main aim is to increase your profile and presence in the portable space, it’s a good concept to start off by taking advantage of existing technologies. If people are using Facebook on their mobile and click a link on your Fanpage for more information, its a good bet that unless your page loads in a short while and displays well, they will give up and go somewhere else pretty fast. Bottom line – best to be absolutely sure any pages you link to from your social media sites load immediatly, display relevant information, and look good on mobile.

The main benefit of a mobile web portal is it is large audience reach. A site that is correctly optimised for portable should display well on the majority of feature phones and intelligent phones that are web-enabled. However, when you move into the realm of apps, things become a whole lot different. Since apps are mainly confined to smart phones, your target audience is narrowed to the phones or platform(s) your application is designed to run on and the percentage of people actively using each platform.

Our main advice to you here is before going down the app route, consider the size of your own potential business audience and find out how many of them are using the 5 major smart phone operating systems: iOS (iPhone), Android, Blackberry OS, Symbian (Nokia), and Windows. By doing this, you will get a good feel for how many versions of an application you must potentially develop.

How much should I budget for a portable app or mobile web portal?

Answer: How long is a piece of string? There really is no easy answer to this. It will come down to exactly what you need to accomplish and what you want your site or app to be able to do and ultimately who you get to do it. It would be unfair to even give guide prices but what we can say is that any prices you are quoted should be grounded in actual fact.

If your site is based on WordPress or some similar content management system, there may be free or low-cost plugins available to display the pages optimised for mobile. If your main web site was built using recent technologies like xhtml and css, optimising it for mobile should not be that difficult or costly, assuming it has mostly static content. If it has more dynamic content with a lot of bells and whistles, don’t be tempted to just replicate each page. Limit your sites to the pages that will transfer well to smaller mobile screens.

On the mobile application side, the costs can range from hundreds to tens of thousands, depending on the complexity of the app and the number of platforms it will be built up for. There are sites on the web where you can create basic apps at no cost at all but these will typically be limited to a predefined set of templates that allow minimal modifications. Some may also charge for hosting content which is something to watch out for.