The mobile app market is growing increasingly, which means that there are numerous opportunities for you to put turn your business idea into reality. 

Consumers all around the world downloaded about 205 million apps in 2018, and it’s expected that by 2022, this number will reach 258 million. 

So, if you’ve found a gap in the market, it’s now the right time to act on your plan.

But, given that building a really great mobile app requires significant investments, it’s good to stick to the look-before-you-leap approach. 

Here are some questions that you need to ask yourself before getting down to work. 

1. What Do You Want to Achieve With Your Mobile App? 

Although it may seem pretty logical that building your own mobile app can be an excellent business move, it’s still important to get to the bottom of your motivations and goals. 

There are different reasons that can prompt you to start with this time-consuming and costly project, keeping up with the latest trends being one of them, but although it can’t be denied that such reasoning can help you gain a competitive edge, you should opt for some more measurable goals. 

How much money can you save or make by building a mobile app can be your perfect starting point. 

Other good reasons that you can consider include increasing sales or improving customer experience. 

2. How Frequently Will Your Customers Use Your App?

Take your smartphone and check how many apps you have installed. Now go to the analytics and the number of those that you use on a daily basis. 

It probably won’t come as a surprise that you’ve hoarded tens of different apps that you have used just once or twice in the past couple of weeks. 

If your app won’t be indispensable to your potential users and if it will end up being one of those that just occupy the storage on customers’ smartphones, then you should think twice about pouring your resources into developing it. 

3. What’s Your Unique Selling Point? 

As you already know, the mobile app market is a pretty saturated and competitive one, so you can’t expect just to build a seemingly great product which does everything it’s intended for properly and make a boom.

You need to cut through all that noise and attract your potential customers with something unique that will add them some value. 

Research your competitors and make a list of their apps together with different features and functionalities they have. 

Then compare all these results with your product outline and see how it stacks up. 

If you don’t have anything new or distinctive to offer, maybe you have to work a bit more on your idea and see how to add a clincher that will attract your audience. 

4. Do You Need a Native App? 

Mobile technology is huge these days, and even Google acknowledged this by rolling out its mobile-first indexing in 2018. In other words, all websites are primarily indexed and ranked based on the mobile version.

If properly designed, built, and executed, a native app can bring numerous additional functionalities to your customers and as a result, your user experience will be significantly improved which can have a positive impact on your search engine rankings, and overall quality of your service. 

However, developing separate apps for different operating systems is an expensive project. It’s a much more cost-effective and practical idea to, for example, convert an Android app to iOS than doing everything from scratch. 

5. Outsourcing vs In-House Development 

This is a complex question mainly because it depends on your general needs for development services. 

Both these options have their pros and cons, and here are some of them that you should take into consideration.

In-house pros: 

In-house developers have a better understanding of your business and its requirements 

The coordination between different teams and departments is much easier

Resource management is much easier 

In-house cons:

It’s more expensive because you need to have developers on your payroll 

Licencing and certification might come up as issues 

Outsourcing pros:

It’s more affordable 

There are more options and you’d have access to a huge talent pool

Risks are lower

Outsourcing cons:

Communication issues and obstacles 

There’s a risk that your product will be of inferior quality 

A possibility that the design won’t be in line with your other products. 

It can really be difficult to decide whether you’ll hire an in-house development team or outsource your mobile app development, but it’s a good idea to assess your budget and see which of these two options will not require breaking the bank. But, don’t limit your spending at the expense of quality as your product will suffer you’ll be headed towards financial loss. 

These 5 questions will set you in the right direction and help you make up your mind about investing in a mobile app.