This document discusses the benefits and risks of developing business apps, emphasizing their potential to increase customer retention and modernize a business's image. It outlines various app functions tailored for businesses, considerations for targeting device platforms, steps involved in building and publishing an app, and provides cost estimates for app development. Ultimately, it suggests that while apps can enhance marketing efforts, they may not necessarily serve as direct revenue sources.

1. What Can an App do for
Carl Brown, PDAgent, LLC
my Business?

2. What we're going to cover today
• How do Apps help existing businesses?
• What functions do business Apps perform?
• What elements go into Apps, and what effect does that
have?
• What device or devices should I target?
• What are the steps in building and publishing an App?
• What can an App end up costing?

3. How do Apps help existing businesses?
A.k.a. What's in it for me?

4. Increase your
customer retention
• If a customer gets used to
using your App, they're less
likely to go to your competitors

5. Put a modern face
on your business
• Some customers refuse to do
business with companies that
don't have Apps
• Just like many of us don't do
business with companies that
don't have websites anymore
• I expect that more potential
customers will start excluding
businesses without Apps over
time

6. Internal Only Apps
(an Aside)
• Some companies have
developed Apps just for their
employees to use
• Point of Sale, Data Collection,
Time Cards, etc.
• That’s another presentation,
though
• We’re talking about customer-
facing Apps today

7. How might Apps hurt businesses?
No reward without some risk

8. Poor Apps are more
annoying than poor websites
• They're more intimate
• They are more closely
associated with your brand by
your customers
• It took more effort for the user
to install it
• Be careful before getting an
App done “on the cheap”
• Better no App than a poor one

9. Have to keep Apps
up to date
• A good App can become a
poor App as technology
progresses
• When services change,
features your customers
depend on will break
• You are expected to respond
to that

10. Not a revenue source
• Do enough people pay you to
read your website for it to pay
for itself?
• But you have a website
anyway, right?
• For most businesses, Apps are
better thought of as a
marketing expense than a
revenue generator.

11. What functions do business Apps perform?
What kind of App might be right for my business?

12. Novelty Apps
• Can be good marketing, if they
take off
• Will be a waste of time if they
don't take off
• Lots of competition in the
novelty space
• High risk/high reward
• Games fall into this category,
too

13. Content Apps
• Inform your customers
• Customers may come to
depend on you
• Customers may come to think
more highly of your brand
• May make your customers feel
they should reciprocate

14. Tracking Apps
• Can be a useful service
provided to your customers
• Can give you good
demographic and marketing
info
• Good lock-in for customers
• They won’t want to have
to re-enter their data into
another App

15. Social Apps
• Allow customers to share their
opinions about your products
or services
• Can generate high adoption
• Needs to be curated
• Failures or mistakes become
very public
• But those may be turned
into opportunities if
handled correctly

16. Service Apps
• Win-win
• Customer does work for
you and feels more in
control
• Creates data for you to use to
enhance retention
• “I see you ordered two
large pepperoni pizzas last
time, would you like the
same thing again?”

17. Hybrids
• You can combine two or more
functions
• Here we have:
• Content (Find Stores)
• Tracking (Favorites)
• Streamlining (my Card)

18. What elements go into Apps, and what effect does
that have?
Should I use build-in User Interface elements, or build custom ones?

19. Standard UI
• Customers will know how to
use it already
• Much less expensive to build
• No novelty or wow factor

20. Custom UI
• Customers will have to figure it
out
• Much more expensive to build
• Can be cool enough people
show their friends
• Can be confusing enough
people hate it

21. What device or devices should I target?
Aren’t there a lot of them? Doesn’t that get expensive?

22. iPhone
• First “App Phone”
• Biggest App Store
• Most Apps per user
• Popular with the early
adopters
• Only one new model per year,
lots of App downloads at new
model release and Christmas

23. Android
• Selling like crazy in the US,
from all carriers
• Fewer Apps downloaded per
user
• Much fewer paid apps per user
• Many different devices, hard to
support/test them all
• Less consistent user
experience

24. Windows Phone 7
• Looks promising as a platform
• Not a lot of market
penetration, yet
• I’d say avoid, at least for now
*Full Disclosure: I don’t program for WP7

25. Blackberry
• Uncertain future as a platform
• I’d say avoid it unless
something drastically changes
*Full Disclosure: I don’t program for BlackBerry

26. iPad
• Great device
• By far the most popular tablet
• More screen means more work
to design for
• Not as portable
• Might not be a good fit for your
business
• More expensive an App if it is
a good fit

27. Android Tablets
• Would be nice to have a
competitor to the iPad
• Sales have been disappointing
so far
• I’d say hold off for now, but
hopefully soon

28. What are the steps in building and publishing an
App?
Just how much work is this, anyway?

29. Step Zero: Register with App Stores
• You have to have accounts on the various App Stores
that you want to submit your App to.
• Or you have to ask your developer to publish it for you
• Either in your name or theirs
• This step can take a while, so Don’t Leave it Until the
Last Minute

30. Step One: Purpose
• Pick your audience
• Pick your functionality
• Pick your goals
• Pick your target platform(s)

31. Step Two: Sketch
• Sketch out our screens
• Sketch out how they transition between them
• Sketch out what data needs to be saved
• Sketch out other functionality (media, server access)

32. Step Three: Development
• Developer breaks App up into tasks
• Checks off the tasks
• Hopefully gives you feedback as they go
• Developer declares “Code Complete”

33. Step Four: Testing
• The more people (especially customers) you can get involved in
testing, the better your App will be
• Test the wrong things, not just the right ones
• What happens if the user types nothing but punctuation in the
email address field?
• What happens if the customer gets a phone call in the middle of
this step?
• Fix the bugs you found in test
• If none were found, testing was probably inadequate

34. Step Five: Submit
• You or your developer submits the App to the Store
• Some Stores this is quick, some have a review cycle that
can take multiple weeks
• Some Apps get rejected and have to be re-worked. Your
contract with the developer should specify any costs
associated with this.

35. Step Six: Marketing
• Technically, this should start earlier that after Submission
• This is a topic that several books have been written about

36. What can an App end up costing?
How can I make decisions without hard numbers?

37. Survey says:
$6,453
• Well, why didn’t you just say
so?
• That’s just an average, it
can depend wildly on
features
• “... most did not include
their personal time in
these figures.”
• “... the cost would be at
least five or ten times
more when using a
contracted team.”

38. Realistically, though
• Simple Utility App (2 screens, like iPhone built-in Weather)
with your Artwork - $2000 (iPhone only, you submit)
• Simple Navigation App (like iPhone Contacts) with your
artwork and built-in UI - $4000 (iPhone Only, you submit)
• It goes up from there.
• Multi-platform (iPad, Android) can add much more.

39. Open-ended costs don’t help me plan
• You should do a two (or more) phase approach
• First, a discovery phase
• Deliverable is a design document
• Once design is locked, only then get a cost estimate
• A reputable mobile vendor (in my opinion) should already
work this way

40. Any Questions?
Contact me at CarlB@PDAgent.com