Crucial Questions You Need To Ask Your Potential App Developer

There are a lot of mobile app development companies in the market that will gladly take your money, but only a few of them are very good at delivering the results you are expecting.

While its easy to sign on the dotted line and start doing business with the first one that comes along and promises you the world, its better to do your due diligence first and ask them probing questions, so you know youre getting your moneys worth.

Thats why it pays to ask the right questions of any mobile app development agency youre thinking of doing business withbefore you take the plunge into the cellular app development process.

Lets see how to choose Mobile app developer and some question to ask an app developer before hiring them.

1. Can I look at the apps you have developed before?

Technical expertise is valuable, but there is no substitute for actual hands-on experience and results in the app development process.

The prospective agency should be more than happy to show you apps theyve already builttheir portfolio, mostlysince this is one of the best ways you can tell if you will get a better result from your investment.

If the prospective app development company doesnt have a good portfolio, beware. If their collection shows good results, then its likely a reliable agency.

Also, see if you can locate on the web app reviews and ratings for past apps the agency has already built. Even asking the agency to tell you how highly the apps theyve made has ranked in the App Store, or if theyve been featured, is a wise move.

2. Can I speak some of your previous clients?

A fundamental question to ask form a Mobile app development client questionnaire, this lets you get a perfect idea at how well the agency youre considering has performed for clients in the past.

Talking with past clients gives you an insight into how the agency handled the relationship throughout the mobile app development process. Ask these past clients how the agency did with deadlines, how it dealt with pressure, and how well app Development Company has communicated with them throughout the process.

How the agency handled these issues is a good indicator of how theyll deal with you while developing your app. It is one of the most important questions to ask an app developer.

3. What is your development process?

You want to know how the agency operates in the most critical timewhen theyre working on your app. You should know how long the agencys latest project took, what unexpected problems rose during the development process, and what the company did to solve them successfully.

Knowing these things help you to decide if youre going to be working with a reliable mobile app developer that knows how to respond on the fly to challenges and can, therefore, produce successful apps.

Indeed, only do business with a company that does agile development. These developers tend to get the mobile app development process done more efficiently and have the best approach to the less viable product.

4. Can you explain your development services in detail?

You should know if the Mobile App Development Company performs adequate beta testing? Is the agency just going to develop your app, but without any quality assurance to back up the work they did for you?

Any reputable mobile application agency has to provide thorough development services such as:

• Business analysis
• Actual app development
• Quality testing
• Successful launch

Unfortunately, when you fail to ask the right questions before, you can fall victim to app agencies that rip you off. Youll know youre about to get ripped off by an agency if they:

From the start, create an inflexible document that rigidly outlines all the requirements or scope of your app project. Pressure you to sign this document as to be all ends the entire project.

Waste a lot of time on deducing how much itll charge you for and how long the whole app development process will take. Push you to sign any fixed cost and time agreement.

5. How skilled your developers are?

You have to be sure the agencys developers can build the features as well as working of the app that you want into your app; basic app developer skills are vital.

You probably want to have reviews and ratings incorporated into the app somehow. Your app likely also needs to be able to talk to current back-end software.

Even if theres no direct experience by the developers at an agency, dont give up just yet.

The agencys developers should be able to tell you how they would implement any proposed feature or functionality and mention any appropriate plugins or frameworks that would be helpful.

Ask for an agencys Android app developers or iOS app developers profile, and look for these crucial pieces of info:

• Contact information (at least the developers email address)
• A Bio or About section that doesnt just include professional details like work history and education, but also tidbits on personality and hobbies
• A portfolio that highlights developer-specific past work history/experience
• Recent project info thats contextual and includes details of the project and who the client was
• A list of relevant skillsets
• Contextual and documented links to off-site repositories (like Github)
• Development-specific education credentials
• Social media profiles for Github and LinkedIn (must-haves!)
• A list of any awards or individual accolades
• A downloadable resume

6. Whats your approach to UI experience and app development principle?

While features are essential, UI design and the UI experience in an application should never be sacrificed. Without best UI design and UX, your app will face a lack of users and popularity.

Since Apple and Android apps account for nearly 5 million unique applications altogether, one of the best ways to make your app stand out is superior design and UX. Trust us: Users can tell if an apps usability is poor right off the bat. Any good agency will succeed in creating an aesthetic app that simultaneously is a joy to use.

7. Do you follow coding standards and which framework you work on?

Ideally, a company should use web application frameworks, which are the best coding systems. They let team quickly and easily work with each other on the same project, using reusable libraries, components and the tools necessary for code maintainability.

Its important to know if the agency youre considering uses this standardised system. If not, that could be a potential warning that said the agency is disorganised. Also, if you ever left the company and gave the work to another company, it may be hard for their developers to jump in seamlessly.

For example, it is now a good practice for most companies to use Bootstrap as a good coding practice. Is the agency youre considering doing the same?

8. Will you submit my app to Google play store or marketplace?

It can be a lengthy and tortuous path to ultimately get your finished application to appear in an app store. Of course, thats what the primary objective is because no one will know of your app unless its been acceptedor, better yet featured in an app marketplace.

A good company should help you through the submission process; after all, you may expect them to does this number of times before for other customers, but it also goes beyond just the submission process.

Look for an agency that has a well-defined policy of how they handle clients app releases. After successful submission to a marketplace, your agency should also regularly monitor your apps performance and then effectively deal with any bugs because thats too overwhelming and time consuming for you to do yourself.

9. Will you provide maintenance post-launch?

After the application launched in play store and the app marketplace, the job is not yet wholly done. From time to time, youll have to do things like:

• Release updates
• Fix bugs
• Add new features and functionality

In other words, your application is a live product that needs regular maintenance.

Your agency should work with you to come up with an app support and maintenance program for this reason, whether thats an hourly rate for one-off updates or a monthly fee for continuous support.

Be sure you determine what their policies are for:

• The cost per each new release
• How they specifically handle bug fixes
• The attentiveness and reliability of their post-launch support

10. Do you understand my customer type and business model?

Its imperative that the agency youre doing business with understands your target audience and your business model, so they can tailor the app they relevantly design to your customers.

If the agency doesn't take the time to understand your customers needs and wants, theyre not going to succeed in developing an app that speaks to their behaviors.

Look for developers that have clients in your industry, as this means they already have a feel for what your user base wants.

In any case, sit down with the developer and talk to them about your customers so that they can understand that segment for UX purposes.

11. What level of involvement from me will you need?

No matter how good the agency is, they wont be able to develop the app without input from you since its your vision, after all. This means no wireframes, prototypes or finished app without your information.

There will be numerous iterations on the way to the finished product, so your involvement is a necessity during the project management.

The agency should tell you this from the very beginning, but if they dont, thats a warning that the agency isnt a good choice.

12. How will you give me updates?

As mentioned, Android and iOS app development is an iterative process, so there will be plenty of opportunities for you and the agency to talk, stay in touch, and exchange feedback.

Any decent company will gladly update you at each turn of the development process to make sure that the progress is meeting your expectations.

Whoevers in charge of your project ought to provide you with access to some favourite project-management/collaboration tools like Asana, Basecamp, Trello or Jira. At the very least, they should always be reachable by email, but collaboration tools let you see the progress in real-time.

13. Can you provide apps for different platforms

This is about offering users unique experiences for various operating systems instead of a one-size-fits-all solution. Coding for an Android app isnt the same as coding for iOS and vice versa. It gets even more granular than that: Within iOS, the app designed for the iPhone wont work seamlessly on a tablet.

While there are more Android users than iOS users, iOS users tend to get the best apps first because theres more money to make on the developer side with iOS than Android (iOS users spend more). Some agencies may want to only develop for iOS, which may not necessarily be what you want.

14. Will you provide me with the code?

Any company that does even a bit of work for the client should still respect the fact that the code belongs to the client. After all, youre paying for the iOS app development and other work, so you should own the system.

Even if you jump ship and go to another company before your app is finished at the first developers, the already completed work will serve as a roadmap to guide any other company you may decide to bring on board later. Your company should tell you how theyll deliver any files and documents to you that theyve already started working on.

CONCLUSION

Those with an app vision sadly end up choosing the wrong app company all too often, which leads to wasted time, money and effort. In our white paper, we wanted to help you cut through this problem by identifying the most critical Mobile app development client questionnaire that you should be asking any prospective company you plan on doing business with.

When it comes to app development, theres so much more to consider than just the project budget or development cost like Hiring Android App Developer. While building an aesthetic app is terrific, ask yourself what it takes to get there.

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